Strategic Plan
2026-2029

Prosperity for all

Extreme poverty remains a daily reality for 9% of people worldwide.

UNDP focusses on creating prosperity for all, while maintaining our strong footprint in poverty and inequality programming and our commitment to leave no-one behind. This shift aligns with our partners' changing aspirations: moving beyond the goalpost of a minimum poverty line to build dynamic, resilient economies and societies where everyone can thrive.

UNDP helps to reduce poverty and create prosperity by

expanding opportunities for people and businesses to access productive assets, decent jobs and livelihoods and build human capital

enhancing protection from shocks, crises and multidimensional vulnerability, through risk reduction, access to essential services and social protection

Prosperity for all must include enhancing women’s economic opportunities and overcoming barriers to their full economic participation, including access to property rights, financial services and equal pay.

Countries follow different development pathways, so UNDP adapts its work to country contexts and population groups. Progress towards prosperity is measured using multidimensional measures that assess both economic opportunities and people's expanded capabilities, including inequality-adjusted and gender-adjusted human development indices.

Effective Governance

Accountable, inclusive and effective governance is central to human development. UNDP develops accountable, people-centred and rights-based governance, in line with the intergovernmental principles of effective governance for sustainable development.

UNDP’s capacity to integrate governance into all its work, as a core dimension of systemic change, gives us a head start in tackling the interconnected challenges of sustainable development.

Using systems thinking, innovation and strategic foresight, UNDP helps countries develop more agile, anticipatory governance and policymaking and provide responsive services and economic opportunities - including digital public infrastructure and increased access to services through digitalization and AI.

Democratic governance, human rights and the rule of law are fundamental for thriving societies and economies, for sustaining peace and human security. Demand is growing for UNDP support in political dialogues and electoral processes, including in transitional and crisis contexts. Partnerships with national and local governments, parliaments and civil society help build an open public sphere where everyone can participate.

In conflict and violence-affected settings, UNDP fosters social cohesion and strengthens community security and local peacebuilding, through dialogue, insider mediation and area-based approaches.

Crisis Resilience

While crises differ widely, the threat they pose to human development and human security is significant and rising. From day one of a crisis, UNDP focuses on protecting development gains and reducing risk, laying the groundwork for recovery and eventual exit from reliance on humanitarian assistance.

UNDP acts as a “bridge-builder” between the humanitarian, development and peacebuilding systems, helping UN country teams and humanitarian teams, led by resident coordinators and humanitarian coordinators, maintain continuity across response phases and advance long-term development.

UNDP plays a key role in stabilisation and early recovery, including expanding women’s economic opportunities and their voice in decision-making. UNDP also supports young people’s participation in democratic governance and amplifies their voices in peace processes.

The UNDP commitment to “stay and deliver” in the toughest environments enables consistent engagement through all phases of crisis. Strong operational capabilities and a global footprint allow us to deliver services at scale, even in remote and high-risk areas. Longstanding relationships and local networks allow us to operate in crisis-affected or politically complex settings where others are unable to stay.

Healthy Planet

No sustainable development is possible without a healthy planet.

UNDP is a leading connector at the nexus of planet and development, delivering integrated solutions to the challenges of climate change, disasters, biodiversity loss, energy, chemicals and waste, while advancing development priorities on governance, prosperity and resilience.

UNDP aims to translate global commitments - under the Paris Agreement, Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, Montreal Protocol and other international agreements - into effective local action. We support countries to assess their options for achieving just and sustainable transitions and harness new ideas to tackle the financing challenge.

UNDP works with:

countries to improve policy coherence around their national pledges and deliver these commitments in ways that respond to local context

governments, civil society, financial institutions and the private sector, to co-invest in action that promotes prosperity while protecting the planet.

Through Climate Promise 2025, UNDP has created a platform to engage the UN system to support countries’ climate goals and strategies.

Digital and AI transformation

Rapid digital advancements and the rise of AI are transforming economies, governance and societies. Yet with opportunity comes risk: threats to cyber-security, data privacy, algorithmic bias and the growing environmental impact of digital technologies. One in three people worldwide is still offline. This lends urgency to UNDP support to countries working towards meaningful connectivity in an open, free and secure digital future.

UNDP’s broad expertise and country-driven approach allow us to support holistic digital transformation in an integrated, systemic way.

UNDP has worked with over 120 countries to leverage digital technologies to support their development. This includes helping institutions and people develop the capabilities to access and use digital technology and data; and supporting countries to implement robust digital public infrastructure, like digital payment and secure digital ID systems.

With our partners we work on policies, regulations and development planning that ensure safe, secure and responsible use of digital and emerging technologies. We are scaling up efforts to address digital harms, including online disinformation and polarization. And we promote sustainable solutions to power digital infrastructure at lower environmental cost.

Gender equality

Realizing women’s rights and equal opportunities is integral to sustainable development and can accelerate results across the board. Complementing the work of UN-Women, UNDP designs its interventions for a deliberate impact on gender equality, seen by partners as one of its most effective areas of work. UNDP meets or exceeds 94% of the targets of the UN System-Wide Action Plan.

Through its trusted relationships with governments, UNDP is well placed to help advance women’s empowerment across all dimensions of development.

UNDP accelerates the leadership and equal participation of women in public institutions, elected positions, the judiciary and the private sector.

UNDP works to enhance women’s economic opportunities through entrepreneurship, job creation and capacity-building, and to recognize, reduce and redistribute women’s unpaid care work.

In crisis settings, UNDP reflects the interests and voice of women and girls.

Demand is growing to help drive systemic change that overturns barriers limiting opportunities for women. We work with national governments, sharing successful approaches across countries and regions, and with local governments, which are closer to citizens and can turn national policies into real benefits for women and men.

Sustainable finance

The development financing gap is not just a financial shortfall; it reflects the misalignment of capital flows with sustainable development priorities. Correcting this requires a shift from scaling development assistance to transforming development financing systems. The differentiating value of UNDP lies in:

bridging public and private finance systems

bringing together development and financial actors to align investment with sustainable development at country level.

UNDP works at the intersections of finance, governance, climate, nature and development to accelerate development and expand investment opportunities in emerging and developing economies.

We work with countries to strengthen their regulatory, institutional and policy frameworks, making financial governance more stable and capital allocation more transparent. Integrated national financing frameworks in 86 countries have mobilized $16 billion in new finance and aligned over $32 billion with sustainable development.

We work with development finance institutions and the private sector to scale financing instruments such as blended finance, green bonds, sustainability-linked loans and insurance-backed investments. We help governments mobilise domestic resources through progressive taxation, SDG-aligned budgeting and results-based fiscal policies.