Small States, Big Signals: What Adoption in Practice Reveals about Trust, Safety, and AI Performance Globally

This report from UNDP's **AI Trust & Safety Re-imagination Programme** looks at AI governance through hands-on engagement with **eleven countries and territories**, many of them small states. - Documents real-world decisions and governance approaches rather than ranking countries or proposing a single regulatory model - Finds that many of the most consequential AI governance decisions happen outside formal policy frameworks: in procurement offices, vendor contracts and software update cycles - Highlights how civil servants often make these choices informally, without clear guidance or accountability structures - Offers lessons on trust, safety and AI performance that are relevant well beyond small states