Behavioural Science

The inaugural UN 2.0 Awards recognize UN system teams and initiatives that are achieving outstanding results through new ways of working and new solutions.

A practical conversation on what it takes for innovation to move beyond pilots and become lasting institutional change.

A forward-looking session on how digital systems can build trust, improve access and serve people in real-world contexts.

An open, audience-driven exchange on the realities of leading transformation across the UN system.

A candid opening conversation to take stock of where UN 2.0 is delivering change, where progress is uneven, and what needs to shift next.

DEPTHS is a five-step applied behavioural science process that integrates behavioural design, human-centred design, and systems thinking to tackle real-world challenges.

Explore impactful innovations across 45 UN Entities!

This paper presents an operating model for integrating BeSci throughout the program cycle (diagnose, design, test, scale, monitor, and evaluate), supported by a methods toolkit and guidance for rapid learning using administrative and survey data (both digital and manual). It also outlines safeguards for responsible implementation, including a human rights-based approach, transparency and accountability, inclusion and accessibility by design, and evaluation standards proportionate to risk, scale, and potential harm.

Developed under FAO’s RENOFARM (Reduce the Need for Antimicrobials on Farms for Sustainable Agrifood Systems Transformation) initiative, this practical manual serves as a complementary resource for livestock Farmer Field School (FFS) facilitators.

UN Human Rights is calling urgent attention to the continuing and critical need for a human rights solution to a particularly “wicked problem” - the complex crisis of trafficking in persons, slavery and other serious human rights violations and abuses that are taking place in South-East Asia in the context of extensive criminal operations set up to perpetrate cyber-enabled fraud. This report centers the lived experience of victims subjected to abuses within these scam operations and who in many cases continue to suffer human rights harms after their release. Through a behavioural science and systems analysis lens, the report also seeks to understand the barriers and enablers that lead victims into these operations through fraudulent recruitment pathways. The report concludes with key messages which call on States, and where relevant other stakeholders, to ensure a human rights-based response to this multidimensional issue, placing the rights, dignity, safety, and well-being of victims of trafficking at its core including through ensuring full respect of the non-punishment principle.

This WHO guideline provides Member States with evidence-based recommendations and implementation considerations on policies to improve school food environments.

UNICEF's latest ABC’s of SBC podcast episode, explore behavioural data science: How combining behavioural theory with new data methods can reveal patterns, frictions, and hidden levers in datasets that weren’t necessarily collected with human behaviour in mind.

This flyer outlines FAO’s approach to applying behavioural insights, supporting decisions that advance food security and climate goals.

These Guidelines are concerned with the practice of hand hygiene to protect community health outcomes, in particular, the reduction of diarrhoeal diseases and acute respiratory infections.

The report sets out proposals to strengthen the UN’s delivery across all three pillars of its work while also advancing more effective collaboration across the pillars.

This first edition of the 2025 UN Innovation Update showcases how 31 UN entities are testing, scaling, and applying practical solutions across health, climate, education, humanitarian action, and more, to accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals.