It’s like a mini UN General Assembly for sustainable development. Starting this week, nearly 50 countries are voluntarily briefing the world about what they’ve done to reach the Sustainable Development Goals, and looking for ideas on what more they could do.
All countries need to improve data collection if the world is to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), according to the head of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
Wu Hongbo said accurate data and statistics, such as birth registrations, play a key role in planning for a country’s development.
Mr Wu was speaking ahead of the first UN World Data Forum, to be held in Cape Town, South Africa, from 15 - 18 January.
Violence against women, the worldwide scourge
The migration of women who take up work in other countries can be empowering, according to a senior UN expert on population issues.
A report released by the UN shows that the number of migrants worldwide was 244 million in 2015, an increase of around 22 million over five years.
Half of those people are women or girls.
The World should prepare for an overall increase in the number of people who are migrating away from home.
That’s one of the key findings in a UN report published on Tuesday.
The report, Trends in International Migrant Stock, says that the number of international migrants is growing faster than the global population, although the figure represents just 3 per cent of the overall population of seven billion.
Migrants have an important economic role, sending around US$ 400 billion in 2014 to their families in developing countries.
Global partnerships must be strengthened if the new sustainable development agenda is to be a success.
That's according to a report launched on Friday by more than 20 UN agencies and partners who tracked international commitments towards realizing the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the 2015 deadline.
Dianne Penn reports.
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A new social contract between governments and their people is critical if the UN’s global development agenda is to deliver on its promise to end extreme poverty and inequality by 2030.
That’s according to Thomas Gass, the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
The number of people living on the planet is expected to rise from just over seven billion today to 8.5 billion by 2030, the UN announced on Wednesday.
Most of this growth will be concentrated in a handful of countries, the majority of them in Africa, according to the latest report by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.
John Wilmoth, Director of the Department’s Population Division, says understanding population trends is critical to human development.