The Sustainable Development Report (SDR) reviews progress made each year on the Sustainable Development Goals since their adoption by the 193 UN Member States in 2015. Published on the eve of the UN Summit of the Future, the Sustainable Development Report 2024 recommends a set of key reforms to the UN system to meet the challenges of the 21st century. This year’s edition also presents a new index of countries’ support to UN-based multilateralism and discusses long-term pathways to attain sustainable food and land systems. The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2024 makes for sobering reading. It finds that only 17 per cent of the SDG targets are on track, nearly half are showing minimal or moderate progress, and progress on over one third has stalled or even regressed. The scarring effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, escalating conflicts, geopolitical tensions, and growing climate chaos are hitting SDG progress hard.

Digitally focused indicators are absent within the System of National Accounts, the standard statistical framework for measuring economic activity. The Digital Supply–Use Tables (Digital SUTs) framework was created to improve the visibility of and information available on digital phenomena while being consistent with the existing national account statistics. The framework has been designed as a derivation from the Supply-Use Tables (SUTs). However, SUTs are not available in many developing countries and often come infrequently with significant time lags. This technical note looks at how countries with SUTs can take steps to begin applying the Digital SUTs framework, and how the fundamental principles and approaches set out in the Digital SUTs framework can be applied to key national accounts aggregates that are more widely available in developing countries, without requiring full SUTs. It points to actions that countries with a limited statistical basis to work from can take to begin compiling Digital SUTs or key indicators following the principles of the framework.

Hepatitis B (HBV) infection is a major public health problem and cause of chronic liver disease. The 2024 HBV guidelines provide updated evidence-informed recommendations on key priority topics. These include expanded and simplified treatment criteria for adults but now also for adolescents; expanded eligibility for antiviral prophylaxis for pregnant women to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HBV; improving HBV diagnostics through use of point-of-care HBV DNA viral load and reflex approaches to HBV DNA testing; who to test and how to test for HDV infection; and approaches to promote delivery of high-quality HBV services, including strategies to promote adherence to long-term antiviral therapy and retention in care. The 2024 guidelines include 11 updated chapters with new recommendations and also update existing chapters without new recommendations, such as those on treatment monitoring and surveillance for liver cancer.

Water nurtures prosperity by meeting basic human needs, supporting health and livelihoods and economic development, underpinning food and energy security, and defending environmental integrity. The impacts of climate change, geopolitical unrest, pandemics, mass migration, hyperinflation and other crises can exacerbate water access inequalities. In nearly all cases, the poorest and most vulnerable groups are those that suffer the greatest risks to their well-being and livelihoods. The 2024 edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report (UN WWDR) describes how developing and maintaining a secure and equitable water future underpins prosperity and peace for all. It calls attention to the complex and interlinked relationships between water, prosperity and peace, describing how progress in one dimension can have positive, often essential, repercussions on the others. Water infrastructure promotes growth and prosperity by storing a reliable water supply and delivering it to economic sectors, including agriculture, industry, energy and the relevant business and service sectors that support billions of livelihoods. Similarly, safe, accessible and well-functioning drinking water and sanitation systems foster prosperity through quality of life, greater education opportunities and a healthy workforce. Cooperation over water resources has generated positive and peaceful outcomes, ranging from participatory, community-led initiatives that have relieved local tensions, to dispute settlement and peacebuilding in post-conflict settings and transboundary watersheds. However, inequalities in the allocation of water resources, in access to water supply and sanitation services, and in the distribution of social, economic and environmental benefits can be counterproductive to peace and social stability. The UN WWDR is UN-Water’s flagship report on water and sanitation issues, focusing on a different theme each year. The report is published by UNESCO, on behalf of UN-Water and its production is coordinated by the UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme. The report gives insight on main trends concerning the state, use and management of freshwater and sanitation, based on work done by Members and Partners of UN-Water. Launched in conjunction with World Water Day, the report provides decision-makers with knowledge and tools to formulate and implement sustainable water policies. It also offers best practices and in-depth analyses to stimulate ideas and actions for better stewardship in the water sector and beyond.