Human Resources Development

A/RES/79/224View PDF

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

A Resolution of the General Assembly, under agenda item 22d Human resources development, published in 2024.

What other versions does this mandate have?

12 versions · 2002–2024

Year	Symbol	Title	Word length	Text similarity
2024	A/RES/79/224	Human resources development	4,869	79%Compare
2022	A/RES/77/182	Human resources development	4,420	76%Compare
2020	A/RES/74/236	Human resources development	3,489	75%Compare
2018	A/RES/72/235	Human resources development	2,892	78%Compare
2016	A/RES/70/220	Human resources development	2,593	80%Compare

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

2 entities

Entity	(Sub-)Programme	Title	Total mandates cited	Expenditure
	Programme 7	Economic and social affairs	291
	Programme 18	Economic and social development in latin america and the caribbean	234

Historical expenditure covers the complete programme or subprogramme, not this mandate. For an overview of all UN entities and programmes, see UN entities and programmes.

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

2 entities

Entity	(Sub-)Programme	Title	Total mandates cited	Expenditure
	Programme 7	Economic and social affairs	291	—
	Programme 18	Economic and social development in latin america and the caribbean	234	—

Historical expenditure covers the complete programme or subprogramme, not this mandate. For an overview of all UN entities and programmes, see UN entities and programmes.

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

8 reports · 2003–2024

Year	Symbol	Title	Mandate resolution
2024	A/79/257	Human resources development report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/77/182
2022	A/77/234	Human resources development report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/74/236
2015	A/70/293	Human resources development report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/68/228
2013	A/68/228	Human resources development report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/66/217
2011	A/66/206	Human resources development report of the Secretary-General	A/RES/64/218

What subjects does this mandate have?

3 subjects

Development Strategies Economic Development Human Resources

What’s in this document?

46 operative paragraphs

Takes note with appreciation of the report of the Secretary-General;³

³A/79/257.

Calls upon the international community to place human resources development at the core of economic and social development and to develop short-, medium- and long-term strategies to effectively enhance human resources capacities, as educated, skilled, healthy, capable, productive and adaptable workforces are the foundation for achieving sustained, inclusive and equitable economic growth and development;

Encourages giving appropriate consideration to human resources development strategies in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development;⁴

⁴Resolution 70/1.

Stresses the need for Member States to emphasize and integrate human resources development into national development strategies, including national development policies and strategies to eradicate poverty and achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, in order to address structural and multidimensional challenges to enhancing national productive capacities and to ensure that human resources development implications are taken into account by all national development stakeholders;

Emphasizes the challenges for global health systems, including the deep and persisting disparities that became visible during the COVID-19 pandemic, which in particular impacts those in vulnerable situations who have faced obstacles in obtaining access to healthcare services;

Looks forward to the World Social Summit under the title “Second World Summit for Social Development” which will be held in Qatar from 4 to 6 November 2025;

Stresses that long-term resilience for human resources development requires the anchoring of efforts in all parts of societies and that policies must be expanded to include holistic and inclusive efforts in decision-making and implementation and in enabling agency to efficiently address unexpected challenges;

Also stresses that cross-border challenges to address human resources development require cross-border solutions and that human resources development is a question of global solidarity and global well-being, in which effective global cooperation depends on shared responsibility to act upon common challenges and adapt societies accordingly;

Recognizes that comprehensive approaches to human resources development that address poverty eradication and the creation of a skilled workforce are also critical in reducing unemployment and brain drain and in promoting greater social inclusion;

Also recognizes that the future of work, affected by progress in science and technology, requires adaptability and faster learning and relearning of new skills, which, in turn, require a shift towards early childhood education, work-based learning, lifelong learning and a comprehensive life-cycle approach to education and training, enabled, inter alia, through enhanced investment in teacher training and professional development and improved access to digital learning resources, especially in developing countries;

Further recognizes the need to promote technical expertise, skills and capacities for workers to mitigate the potential negative impacts of artificial intelligence on the labour market, and encourages Member States and relevant stakeholders to foster programmes aimed at digital training, capacity-building, innovation, promoting full and productive employment and decent work for all, harnessing opportunities and enhancing access to the benefits of artificial intelligence systems, especially in developing countries;

Encourages States, the private sector and other relevant stakeholders to take appropriate steps, in accordance with their plans and policies, to help individuals to make well-informed choices in education, training and careers, develop an integrated system of quality education and training that responds to constantly evolving needs, promote employer recognition and career development based on skills and foster a culture that supports and celebrates lifelong learning, in order to provide opportunities for all to develop their fullest potential throughout life, regardless of their starting points, thereby improving their chances of staying gainfully employed, and calls for more effective support for developing countries in this regard, including from the United Nations system;

Encourages Member States to adopt and implement comprehensive human resources development strategies premised on national development objectives that ensure a strong link between quality education, training and employment, help to maintain a productive and competitive workforce and are responsive to the needs of the economy;

Stresses that human resources development policies should focus on supporting education, full and productive employment and decent work for all and retention for the emergence of a sufficiently wide and flexible pool of skilled human resources, especially among women and youth, to support all sectors of the economy and be matched with present and future workforce needs, which requires well-sequenced investments in basic education, vocational training, on-the-job training and more advanced managerial, engineering and scientific education to increase the supply of technological knowledge that can be absorbed by national innovation systems;

Emphasizes the need to adopt cross-sectoral approaches and mechanisms to identify human resources development needs in the medium and long term for all sectors of the economy, to formulate and implement policies and programmes to address those needs and to acknowledge the role of the private sector in training, education and employment;

Recognizes that comprehensive and flexible science, technological knowledge and innovation strategies that encompass all sectors of the economy are critical to ensuring that skills are matched with labour market demand and are ready to adapt to and benefit from a constantly evolving technology landscape;

Acknowledges the need to promote and support inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning to ensure that all children, youth and adults are empowered with the relevant knowledge and skills to shape more resilient, inclusive and sustainable societies that are able to adapt to rapid technological change, and stresses the need to foster international cooperation to support developing countries in addressing their constraints in access to technologies and education;

Calls upon Member States to continue to increase investment in accessible, safe, inclusive and equitable quality education for all, including early childhood education, youth and adult literacy programmes or initiatives, skills enhancement and promote opportunities for lifelong learning, technical and vocational training, and digital literacy;

Encourages talent mobility and circulation, including through educational programmes, and support developing countries to retain talent and prevent a brain drain while providing suitable educational and working conditions and opportunities for the workforce;

Emphasizes that, when science, technological knowledge and innovation and human resources development approaches are mutually reinforcing, they can help to implement sustainable development in its three dimensions;

Recognizes the need to harness the potential of information and communications technologies as critical enablers of sustainable development and to overcome digital divides, and stresses that capacity-building for the productive use of such technologies should be given due consideration in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development,⁵ and looks forward to the convening of the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville, Spain in 2025;

⁵Resolution 69/313, annex.

Encourages the international community to bridge the digital divide, within and among countries, to promote inclusive and sustainable development, which is an important precondition for closing the economic divide within and among countries, including through appropriate ecosystems for innovation and targeted support for enabling access for all to appropriate digital infrastructure;

Calls for proactively responding to the opportunities offered by and the adverse impacts of technological changes on the labour market, as appropriate and in accordance with national circumstances, by adopting effective social protection systems, the recognition and credentialling of non-formal and informal learning, targeted support for disadvantaged groups and support for adaptation during transition periods;

Stresses that investment in human resources development should be an integral part of national development policies and strategies, and in this regard calls for the adoption of policies to facilitate investment focused on physical and social infrastructure, including education, in particular skills upgrading and vocational training in areas such as science and technology, including information and communications technology, as well as in capacity development, health and sustainable development;

Encourages Member States, as appropriate, to continue to implement nationally appropriate social protection systems and measures for all, including social protection floors, to adopt policies that strengthen existing safety nets and protect people in vulnerable situations and to take other appropriate actions, including boosting national economic performance, recognizes that social protection floors, defined according to national priorities and the individual circumstances of States, can provide systemic approaches to addressing poverty in all its forms and dimensions and vulnerability, and reducing inequalities can contribute significantly to successful human resources development strategies, acknowledges in this regard that many developing countries lack the necessary financial resources and capacity to implement such countercyclical measures, and in this regard recognizes the need for continued mobilization of additional domestic and international resources, as appropriate;

Encourages States to consider policies consistent with the International Labour Organization Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work and their obligations under all relevant ratified conventions of the International Labour Organization, and recalls the importance of promoting decent work for all and of increasing quality jobs and through employment relationships based on effective social dialogue;

Stresses that human resources development strategies should include measures aimed at reducing unemployment and underemployment among young people and the long-term unemployed, who have been disproportionately affected by slow and uneven economic and jobs recovery and by labour-displacing technological changes, inequalities, and integrating underutilized human resources into the labour market through policies that promote skills development and productivity, facilitate adaptation during transition periods and reduce barriers to employment, including gender barriers, including by providing incentives, as appropriate, for recruiting, retaining and reskilling and upskilling, assisting in job-search, job-matching and vocational and on-the-job training, and by promoting, inter alia, youth entrepreneurship development;

Recognizes that an ageing workforce can have positive and negative implications for labour markets, and stresses the importance of lifelong learning to ensure the inclusion of older workers in the future of work;

Emphasizes the need for development-oriented policies that support productive activities, decent job creation, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation, and encourages the formalization and growth of micro-, small and medium-sized enterprises, including through access to financial services;

Stresses the need for Member States to retain and further enhance national human resources by boosting job-rich growth and recovery and promoting decent work, including by adopting policies and incentives that enhance full and productive employment and decent work for all, labour productivity and stimulate private investment and entrepreneurship and strengthen the role of labour administration and institutions in order to foster job creation, address the gender wage gap, reduce occupational segregation and increase the participation of people living in poverty and those in vulnerable situations, including workers in the informal economy;

Recognizes the important role of information and communications technologies for attaining the Sustainable Development Goals and for a sustainable, inclusive and resilient recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, and calls upon all stakeholders in the information and communications technologies sector, including Governments and the United Nations system, to fully consider the health and socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic as they strengthen their efforts to bridge the digital divides within and between developed and developing countries, with particular attention to the poorest and most vulnerable, as well as women and girls, and to ensuring affordable and reliable connectivity, the promotion of digital access and digital inclusion, and the expansion of accessible and inclusive distance-learning solutions and digital health services;

Emphasizes the need to address the interlinkages among human resources development, poverty eradication, energy and food security, sustainable agriculture and rural development, and encourages countries to strengthen capacity in agriculture and rural development;

Encourages Member States to facilitate access to and apply environmentally sound technologies, and notes with appreciation the launch of the Technology Facilitation Mechanism established in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development,⁶ based on a multi-stakeholder collaboration among States, civil society, the private sector, the scientific community, United Nations entities and other stakeholders, in order to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals;

⁶Ibid., para. 123.

Stresses that sustainable development is dependent, inter alia, on healthy people, calls upon Governments to continue their efforts to strengthen national health systems, urges the further strengthening of international cooperation in the area of health, including mental health, inter alia, by enhancing efforts to achieve universal health coverage by 2030 and through the exchange of best practices in the areas of strengthening health systems, access to medicines, education, full and productive employment and decent work for all, and retention of a competent, skilled and motivated health workforce, transfer of technology on mutually agreed terms and production of affordable, safe, effective and good-quality medicine, and in this regard also stresses that international cooperation and assistance, including funding, need to become more predictable and to be better aligned with national priorities and channelled to recipient countries in ways that strengthen national health systems;

Calls upon the international community, including the relevant entities of the United Nations system, to support the efforts of developing countries to address the adverse and lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, HIV and AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis and other infectious diseases and to halt the spread of epidemic diseases as well as the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases in all regions of the world, and their effects on human resources;

Stresses the consequences of the pandemic on job security across different sectors with impacts especially high for workers in informal employment, concentrated in low- and middle-income countries, and that 20.4 per cent of young people globally were not in education, employment or training in 2023;

Encourages Governments to facilitate investments in education, skills and decent job creation, and recognizes that these actions are not only essential to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals but will also generate benefits across the Goals, including the creation of decent jobs, the reduction of youth unemployment, the enhancement of women’s economic empowerment and participation and inclusive growth;

Calls upon relevant United Nations entities to support national efforts to build institutional capacities to address long-term national human resources development needs in addition to providing training to individuals;

Calls upon the international community to assist developing countries in the implementation of national human resources development strategies, and encourages the international community, including the private sector and relevant civil society actors, to provide and mobilize financial resources, capacity-building, technical assistance and technology transfer on mutually agreed terms and to supply expertise from all sources, as available;

Calls for steps to integrate a gender perspective into human resources development, including through policies, strategies and targeted actions aimed at promoting women’s capacities and access to productive activities, and in this regard emphasizes the need to ensure the full participation of women in the formulation and implementation of such policies, strategies and actions;

Stresses the important contributions of the public and private sectors, respectively, in meeting national training and education needs to support the efficient functioning of enterprises and matching the needs of a rapidly changing economy, and encourages the integration of those contributions, including through the greater use of public-private partnerships and incentives;

Calls for actions at the national, regional and international levels that will give high priority to improving and expanding literacy, as well as science proficiency, including by providing affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university, and stresses the need to ensure that, by 2030, children everywhere, girls and boys alike, will be able to complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education, leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes;

Encourages Governments to consider appropriate measures at the national level, such as upgrading human skills, better aligning educational and training systems to labour market needs and strengthening labour institutions and regulations to respond to economic fluctuations;

Encourages efforts by Member States and the international community to promote a balanced, coherent and comprehensive approach to international migration and development, in particular by building partnerships and ensuring coordinated action to develop capacities, including for the management of migration, and in this regard reiterates the need to consider innovative measures to maximize the benefits of migration while minimizing the negative effects on origin, transit and destination countries of the migration of both highly skilled and low-skilled workers from developing countries, taking into account the principle of national sovereignty;

Reaffirms the commitment at the very heart of the 2030 Agenda to leave no one behind, and commits to taking more tangible steps to support people in vulnerable situations and the most vulnerable countries and to reach the furthest behind first;

Requests the Secretary-General to submit to the General Assembly, at its eighty-first session, an action-oriented report on the implementation of the present resolution in line with the 2030 Agenda, and decides to include in the provisional agenda of its eighty-first session, under the item entitled “Eradication of poverty and other development issues”, the sub-item entitled “Human resources development”.

Who adopted this document and its mandates?

What other versions does this mandate have?

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

Who cites this mandate in the budget?

Which reports were submitted under this mandate?

What subjects does this mandate have?

What’s in this document?

Table of contents

Who cites this mandate in the budget?