Annual Report 2023

foreword

Unity will win

With a calendar date that will go down in history as marking the official end of the COVID-19 pandemic – the most simultaneously-felt global disruption since World War II – 2023 should have been a year of pure optimism. Instead, it marked a time in which very little felt safe, secure, or straightforward. Conflict proliferated – from Sudan to Ukraine to Gaza – with the highest number of conflicts worldwide in eighty years. Incredible technological advances exposed their own weaknesses: artificial intelligence-powered misinformation was considered the world’s biggest short-term threat by the business community and the cloud generated a bigger carbon footprint than the airline industry. Important development advances were overshadowed by pervasive inequalities: the gender gap in education narrowed, with some glaring exceptions like Afghanistan, and yet women had equal legal rights to men in only 14 countries in the world.

This was the complex, uncertain context in which UNDP operated in 2023, with multilateralism in a deep state of flux. Throughout, however, we held that international cooperation was deflated, not defeated. The green shoots of development were also visible. A new, highly effective malaria vaccine; a boom of investment in renewable energy overtaking fossil fuel investment for the first time; a doubling since 2021 of the number of countries making scientific knowledge, infrastructure, and data freely accessible to all. Though progress against targets remained stubbornly off track, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) gained traction: three-quarters of investors tracked their investments using the SDGs, a modest but hopeful improvement on previous years.

The people that I met in the course of my travels last year inspired me to redouble our efforts as UNDP: the officials we worked with to raise funds and ideas in the aftermaths of the catastrophic floods in Pakistan and the devastating earthquake in Türkiye; the ecosystem of insurance companies, politicians, sailors and activists that helped to save the FSO SAFER tanker off the coast of Yemen and – against all the odds – avoid a potentially catastrophic environmental disaster in the Red Sea; the innovators and entrepreneurs that I met in Rwanda, a nation that 29 years ago had lost all reason for hope, now creating its future.

The people that inspire me include 28-year-old Sofia, a musician and teacher in Irpin, Ukraine, playing the flute on the spot where her family house was destroyed in the Russian invasion. She told me that all material things can be earned back; the main thing is that she and her family are together. They include all of our colleagues serving in Gaza, including my UNDP colleague Issam Al Mughrabi, who worked with UNDP for thirty years before he and his family were killed by an airstrike in December. These are the people to whom we dedicate our efforts.

The results captured in the pages that follow are illustrations of what was possible in 2023 with your support. Through our new Crisis Offer, we stayed and served the people of all 60 countries defined as ‘fragile’ by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Through our Digital Strategy, we advanced digital public infrastructure as a centre piece of poverty eradication. Through our Climate Promise, we helped to usher climate financing into the heart of national development strategies while supporting over 140 countries to access $2.2 billion in green grants. Through our Sustainable Finance Hub, we leveraged $17 billion in additional investment in the SDGs, mostly private capital from bonds and public tax revenue. Through policy innovation, sound fiscal and risk management, and future-focused investments, we delivered important development results, surpassing our highest financial delivery in over a decade in the process.

To each of you, I offer my sincere thanks and I call on your continued support. As societies polarize, investing in development is more important than ever. UNDP’s forthcoming Human Development Report explores this in depth. History has shown us what happens when trust breaks down, when laws and language dehumanize, when violence is normalized, and people’s human rights and freedoms are left to silently collapse as others look away. Our commitment at UNDP is that we will not look away. We stay and serve.

Through our universal presence, we have grown up embedded with the peoples of the United Nations – the communities of the world whose ideas and innovation are shaping the future of development. With our feet on the ground and our eyes to the future, we remain committed to helping those furthest behind to catch up. Only then can we all move forward together.

Achim Steiner
Administrator
United Nations Development Programme

Development for all

Discover how UNDP's work tackled the greatest development challenges of 2023 and beyond.

Partnering

Let's connect: Our partnerships in 2023 included Member States, UN agencies, international financial institutions, civil society and NGOs, academia, and the private sector.

Funding

Thank you to all our 2023 funding contributors and partners - what a difference you have made for people and our planet.

Our People

Let's grow: With our 23,000+ personnel and a strong, gender-balanced leadership, UNDP is a place where people can thrive.

Our offer, Our Ambition

Let's build a better world: UNDP's Strategic Plan 2022-2025 is our development promise - driven by our six signature solutions, three enablers, four moonshots, and the 17 SDGs.

Crisis and Resilience

Let's recover: UNDP spends 50% of its resources in fragile contexts. Conflict continues in Sudan, Gaza, Ukraine and beyond, but so does our support.

Our Preformance

Let's deliver: UNDP is always striving for greater efficiency, integrity, diversity, equality, safety, transparency, accountability, and sustainability.

Innovation

Let's be future-smart: Learn how UNDP is using digital, data and innovation at scale to address exclusion, climate change, and much more.

Awards

Our work on development in 2023 was acknowledged by peers and publications aorund the world.

One world

UNDP's 23,000+ personnel are working together across 170 countries and territories – for people and our planet.

Hello again.

Peruse our library of ever-evolving annual reports from 2015 to 2022.

Annual Report
2023

foreword

Unity will win

Development for all

Partnering

Partnering

Funding

Funding

Our People

Our People

Our Offer,
Our Ambition

Our offer, Our Ambition

Crisis and Resilience

Crisis and Resilience

Our Preformance

Our Preformance

Innovation

Innovation

Awards

Awards

Our presence

One world

Hello again.

Annual Report2023

foreword

Unity will win

Development for all

Partnering

Partnering

Funding

Funding

Our People

Our People

Our Offer, Our Ambition

Our offer, Our Ambition

Crisis and Resilience

Crisis and Resilience

Our Preformance

Our Preformance

Innovation

Innovation

Awards

Awards

Our presence

One world

Hello again.

Annual Report
2023

Our Offer,
Our Ambition