Apps
From data visualisation to the latest news, the UN is at your fingertips with nearly a dozen mobile apps to date. Load them onto your phone or tablet and keep up to date with our digital works in progress!
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Humanitarian Kiosk
FreeThe Humanitarian Kiosk (HKiosk) iOS app provides a range of up-to-the-minute humanitarian related information from emergencies around the world. The application has multiple independant kiosks which reflect locations where UN-OCHA operates or there is an ongoing international humanitarian emergency. Once installed, you simply select the kiosks that you are interested in and they will be automatically downloaded and synchronized to your mobile device. Syncing selected crisis means that you can see the information even when you are offline.
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UN Calendar of Observances
FreeLearn how the United Nations makes a difference with the UN Calendar of Observances. This free iOS app features official United Nations observances and links to related videos and further information. It also illustrates how the UN makes a difference in tackling global challenges. The UN Calendar can store UN observances in the native calendar, or it can be used independently.
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UN CountryStats
FreeUN CountryStats is a data visualisation tool to compare key economic, social, environmental, trade, and area & population indicators across 216 countries and territories. Indicators, drawn from the United Nations' unique and authoritative data set, can be viewed as complete country tables or visualised as bar graphs. Other useful tools include detailed definitions of each indicator and the ability to save graphs as favourites.
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UN News Reader
FreeThe UN News Reader is a free mobile news application for quick and easy access to all stories from the UN News Centre. With a simple, user-friendly interface, you can read up-to-the-minute latest stories or browse by subject and geographic region. The News Reader downloads the latest feed to your device so you can read stories offline later, plus you can save them as favourites for quick reference.
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UN Chronicle
Free / Starting from $0.99 per issueThe premier periodical of the UN since 1946, this quarterly magazine covers the current affairs of the United Nations from contemporary and historical perspectives. The app offers the latest issue for $0.99, with back issues available for $1.99.
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Score the Goals
Free'Score The Goals: Teaming Up to Achieve the Millennium Development Goals' is an educational comic featuring ten football/soccer UN Goodwill Ambassadors, who are challenged to tackle the eight Millennium Development Goals along their journey towards being rescued. The youth-oriented comic book provides a fun interactive way to help understand, familiarise and reflect about poverty and development issues. The app includes the comic book in six languages: English, French, Spanish, Chinese, German, and Korean.
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Basic Facts about the United Nations
USD $6.99Basic Facts about the United Nations is a portable official reference for those interested in the UN, its structure, how it works, and the main issues it confronts. You can learn about UN action in peace and security, economic and social development, human rights, humanitarian affairs, international law, and decolonisation. You can explore details of UN membership, peacekeeping operations, budget, and contact information for UN offices and centres worldwide.
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Find more UN apps on the App Store
Ebooks
For those who prefer eReaders, the UN has you covered. Whether it is long-form reading or reference material, there are dozens of titles on multiple platforms, with more titles and platforms added regularly. Wherever you read it, we want to be there.
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United Nations at a Glance
by United Nations Department of Public Information
USD $4.99This simple, authoritative guide provides a starting point for readers who are new to the UN. In clear language, this book explains what the UN does, how the UN does it, who the actors are, and when historical milestones occurred. Illustrated with photos and stories from the field, the guide examines the work of the UN in international peace and security, economic and social development, human rights, and humanitarian action. As a resource to students and teachers alike, additional features include definitions of frequently used terms, rich statistics, questions and answers, and the building blocks of international law. For anyone who wants to learn more about the world's foremost intergovernmental organization, United Nations at a Glance is the perfect place to start.
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Yearbook of the United Nations 2008
by United Nations Department of Public Information
USD $27.99With its comprehensive coverage of political and security matters, human rights issues, economic and social questions, legal issues, and institutional, administrative and budgetary matters, the Yearbook of the United Nations is the most authoritative reference work available on the activities and concerns of the Organization. Fully indexed, the Yearbook includes the texts of all major General Assembly, Security Council and Economic and Social Council resolutions and decisions. This latest volume, the sixty-second, highlights the attention given by the United Nations in 2008 to conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Georgian province of Abkhazia, and the Sudan, along with the challenges posed by the global food security crisis, severe economic recession, climate change, natural disasters, piracy and terrorism.
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Basic Facts about the United Nations
by United Nations Department of Public Information
USD $6.99This comprehensive handbook designed for the general public, sets forth the structure of the United Nations, how the Organization works and the main issues it deals with in their importance for people everywhere. Along with explaining the role played by its principal organs and the family of UN organizations, individual chapters explore UN contributions to international peace and security, economic and social development, human rights; humanitarian action, international law; and decolonization. A series of appendices documents UN membership, peacekeeping operations, budget, and contact information for UN information centres, services and offices. This new edition of the work has been substantially revised to take account of many significant developments that have taken place in the world and in the United Nations itself since the last edition of the book (previously titled The UN Today) in 2008.
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Human Development Report 2011: Sustainability and Equity – A Better Future for All
by United Nations Development Programme
USD $2.99This report examines the urgent global challenge of sustainable development and its relationship to rising inequality within and among countries. It strives to identify polices that would make development both more sustainable and more equitable. The integral relationship between inequality and unsustainability is recognized. The inequitably apportioned control and consumption of natural resources is a key driver of global warming — and yet those who will suffer most from climate change are disproportionately those least responsible for environmental deterioration. The report seeks to identify ways in which sustainability and equity can be jointly advanced. It examines long-term trends in inequality at national and global levels, and argues why it is essential to promote practices today that will both increase sustainability and reduce inequality for future generations.
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The Global Social Crisis: Report on the World Social Situation 2011
by United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
USD $5.99This report explores the social impact of the great recession and warns of the possibility of continuing global social crisis in the face of increasing fiscal consolidation and austerity measures, which threaten the sustainability of a recovery. The effects of the financial and economic crisis on social progress have been sharp, widespread, and deep. Given the fragility of the economic recovery and uneven progress in major economies, social conditions are expected to recover slowly. Increased poverty, hunger and unemployment due to the crisis will continue to affect billions of people in many developed and developing countries for years to come. Austerity measures in response to high government debt in some advanced economies are not only threatening public sector employment and social expenditure, but are also making the recovery more uncertain and fragile.
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World Economic and Social Survey 2011: The Great Green Technological Transformation
by United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs
USD $6.99This survey explains why the "Great Green Technological Transformation" will have to be fully realized in developing countries if they are to achieve food security and rural development, minimize the damage from natural hazards and extreme disasters partly induced by climate change, and transform their economies to beat destitution and create productive jobs. Avoiding the climate change tipping point will require fundamental shifts in existing technologies to transform manufacturing, agriculture, living arrangements and infrastructure and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions, make more efficient use of natural resources and derivatives, create less waste, preserve biodiversity and reduce social disparities. The survey assesses options and policies to facilitate a new technological revolution, and the challenges societies face in achieving sustainable development and poverty reduction.
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The State of the World's Children 2012
by UNICEF
USD $3.99The world is undergoing the largest wave of urban growth in history: half of the world's people — and half of the world's children — live in cities today. Urbanization is linked with economic development. But while urban growth continues at great pace, adequate services and infrastructure do not automatically follow, with urgent implications for children. This publication explores the challenges to child rights in a rapidly urbanized world marked by economic uncertainty, unemployment, increased prevalence of conflict, humanitarian emergencies and climate change. It documents and examines existing knowledge and programmatic approaches to the multiple and complex realities of urban poverty and deprivation. It makes a call for area specific approaches, grounded in communities and in partnership with municipal authorities.
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Achieving Global Sustainability
by United Nations University
USD $6.99This book looks at how to achieve a more secure level of global sustainability and gathers recommendations. It analyzes the relationship between globalization and sustainability, evaluating arguments on the necessity of fundamental changes in economic growth and discusses the radical evolutions in socioeconomic development in terms of social common capital, social discipline and economic valuation of the environment. The publication also examines strategies for achieving a sustainable society and presents an overview on adaptation for environmental change. Finally, it introduces policy recommendations for global sustainability, including those advocating a low-carbon society by 2050, a "Green New Deal" as a means of integrating policies, climate security, and international discipline.
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Green Economy and Good Governance for Sustainable Development
by United Nations University
USD $6.99Much of the debate on green growth and environmental governance tends to be general in nature, and is often conceptual or limited to single disciplines – such as green growth being dominated by economists and governance by political scientists. This book examines such terms within the context of wide-interest topics including education, oceans and cities, and mixes conceptual discussion with empirical research. It takes stock of the achievements and obstacles towards sustainability over the last 20 years, and proposes new ideas and changes to create a more sustainable future. Students, academics and professionals interested in the notion of using a green economy and good governance to achieve sustainable development and poverty eradication are recommended to read this book.
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eCollection
Launching in the summer of 2013, the UN eCollection is a research tool containing all current publications of the UN, including books, reports, journals, and working papers. Subscribers can search across the full text or can browse by subject, region, or agency. Advanced features include: build your own book, comprehensive usage statistics, MARC records, and citation links. The UN eCollection will initially include 2,000 titles, with 500 more to be added each year.
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• Access all published books, reports, periodicals and working papers
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• Search across the full content of the entire collection of UN publications
• Discover titles individually and in subject-based collections
• Build your own book with chapters from multiple publications
• Download metadata and comprehensive usage statistics
• Includes MARC records and citation links
• Bundle with the Comtrade database for additional discounts
Databases
Whether you want authoritative data on economy, population, or development, the UN has your number. Featured databases are included below.
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UN Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade)
Since 1962, UN Comtrade has provided comprehensive and standardised official annual trade statistics reported by 200 countries across 6,000 different products.
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Development Business (DB)
DB is an official procurement publication for opportunities in consulting, contracting and exporting. Published by the UN and updated daily, DB provides procurement notices, development bank operational summaries, and contract awards from the UN, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and other multilateral banks, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and national governments.
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Daily Subsistence Allowance Rates (DSAR)
DSAR provides per diem rates based on local hotel and meal prices that are updated monthly, and covers 250 cities and all countries.
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Monthly Bulletin of Statistics (MBS)
Since the founding of the League of Nations in 1920, and then integrated into the UN in 1947, MBS has published the latest economic and social statistics from all participating countries, now including over 200 countries and territories. Fifty-eight tables are maintained with monthly, quarterly, or annual data on construction, earnings, employment, energy, finance, manufacturing, national accounts, population, prices, production, trade and transport.
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UNdata
UNdata is a centralised portal to 34 major databases from the UN and its affiliated agencies covering a wide range of topics: crime, education, energy, environment, finance, food and agriculture, gender, health, HIV/AIDS, human development, industry, information and communication technology, labour, national accounts, official development assistance, populations, refugees, tourism and trade.
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UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Statistics
UNCTAD’s statistics focus on developing and transitioning economies and are fully normalised across nine major categories: commodities, creative economy, economic trends, external financial resources, foreign direct investment, information economy, international trade, maritime transport, and population and labour force.
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Millennium Indicators Database
The Millennium Indicators Database measures progress on the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDG) and is compiled by the Inter-agency and Expert Group (IAEG) on MDG Indicators.
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UN Group of Experts on Geographical Names (UNGEGN) Database
The UNGEGN Database is a multilingual, multiscriptual geo-referenced geographical names database developed by UNGEGN and the UN Statistics Division, with input from the UN Terminology and Reference Section, the UN Cartographic Section and the UN Geographic Information Working Group.
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