More from UN DESA - December 2025

World Basketball Day 2025: From soccer ball to global phenomenon

Basketball was invented in 1891… using a soccer ball. The first games were very slow.  Each time someone scored, someone had to climb a ladder to retrieve the ball because the baskets had no holes. Now, almost half of the world’s population is interested in basketball - a whopping 3.3 billion people. 

The Collaborative on Citizen Data moves from vision to implementation

The Collaborative on Citizen Data, co-led by the UN DESA’s Statistics Division and the International Civil Society Centre, recently brought together more than 70 participants from civil society organizations, national statistical offices, national human rights institutes, academia, and regional and international organizations to focus on the next steps for implementing the Copenhagen Framework on Citizen Data.

A new look at urbanization: What’s changing and why it matters

After over six years, the United Nations has released the much-anticipated 2025 update of the World Urbanization Prospects (WUP), a flagship report that tracks how cities, towns, and rural areas are changing around the world. We spoke with Lubov Zeifman, a Population Affairs Officer who worked on the report, to learn what’s new and why it matters.

What’s different in this latest update?