Yearbook | United Nations
The authoritative reference work on the UN System

The Yearbook of the United Nations

The Yearbook of the United Nations—published by the Department of Global Communications—stands as the authoritative reference work on the activities and concerns of the Organization. Based on official UN documents, the Yearbook provides comprehensive coverage of political and security matters, human rights issues, economic and social questions, legal issues, and institutional, administrative and budgetary matters.

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Scroll through the Yearbook collection by decade, or go directly to a specific volume using the drop-down menu.

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YUN 2014 cover

Yearbook Pre-press

Yearbook Pre-press logo

The Yearbook Pre-press complements the published Yearbook collection, offering draft chapters or detailed chapter research outlines from Yearbooks currently in production. The Pre-press is updated frequently as new material becomes available.

Yearbook Express

Yearbook Express logo

Welcome to the multilingual Yearbook Express! The Express features the chapter introductions of recent Yearbooks, along with the report of the Secretary-General on the work of the Organization in those years, in all six UN official languages.

Yearbook News

Since 2014, graduate students in English Translation and Interpreting in the School of Foreign Languages at Soochow University have been collaborating with the Yearbook Unit of the United Nations Department of Global Communications in the context of a compulsory course in rendering the chapter introductions of Yearbook of the United Nations volumes that make up the Yearbook Express from English into Chinese, with a total of thirty-one editions of the Yearbook Express covering the period from 1983 to 2013 having been translated. This work is now being capped by their preparation of a bilingual English-Chinese edition of the first volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations (1946–47), which features an extensive portrayal of the founding of the Organization amid the turmoil of the Second World War and its initial steps in the immediately ensuing years—the first part of which is now available on the Yearbook website

Yearbook of the United Nations, 2015

Now available! Yearbook of the United Nations, 2015

The online edition of the sixty-ninth volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations, covering the Organization’s global activities in 2015, is now available on the Yearbook website. The 2015 edition of the Yearbook, as Secretary-General António Guterres states in the Foreword to the volume, recounts the pivotal year in which the global community reached agreement on a number of crucial road maps for the future—including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change. 

Fostering international understanding

Since 2014, students in the Master of Translation and Interpreting programme in the School of Foreign Languages at Soochow University have been translating the Yearbook Express from English to Chinese. More

About the Yearbook

Yearbook of the United Nations, 2015

The 2015 Yearbook

The Yearbook of the United Nations—published by the Department of Global Communications—stands as the authoritative reference work on the activities and concerns of the Organization. Based on official UN documents, the Yearbook provides comprehensive coverage of political and security matters, human rights issues, economic and social questions, legal issues, and institutional, administrative and budgetary matters.

The 2015 Yearbook The sixty-ninth volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations presents the work of the United Nations in dealing with recurring conflicts with severe humanitarian consequences in the Middle East, including in the Syrian Arab Republic, highlights the Organization’s rapid response to the Ebola virus disease outbreak across West Africa and documents United Nations coordination of policy discussions to finalize a global sustainable development agenda. More

The Yearbook cover

The Yearbook of the United Nations has served as the Organization’s flagship reference work since 1947, and looking back at the illustrated Yearbook dustjackets provides a unique perspective on more than 60 years of developments in visual design. These covers have regularly reflected the culture of their time, while alluding to the wealth of information on UN activities and concerns contained within each volume.