United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has a multi-pronged approach to sustainable development, as the organization supports a wide range of initiatives. The organization is the only UN agency whose mandate covers all aspects of education and UNESCO provides leadership in education, strengthens educational systems worldwide, and responds to global education challenges through the lens of gender equality. UNESCO seeks to protect and promote culture and diversity through the establishment of world heritage sites. The organization assists international governments in investing in science and technology, developing science policies, and evaluating the ways scientific research can aid in a country’s development and sustainability practices. UNESCO accomplishes these tasks through partnerships with governments and international organizations, and through its field offices.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization produces an annual flagship report, the Global Education Monitoring Report, which assesses global progress toward the Sustainable Development Goal on education (SDG 4) and its 10 targets. The organization provides a publications repository, which allows online access to UNESCO global reports and open access materials from the organization. Additionally, UNESCO hosts a data portal, where the user can select from a list of indicators and view the data in table format. The themes that UNESCO follows can be viewed from the theme portal and country profiles—also provided with data related to education, literacy, science, technology, innovation, and culture. In addition to the wide variety of resources UNESCO provides, the organization also posts regular updates in its news portal.