United Nations
Behavioural Science Group
Why UN Behavioural Science?
Avel Chuklanov
Why does the UN need behavioural science?
Many policies and programmes designed to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goals require people, communities or decision makers to change their behaviours to generate impact. This could be attending a training or participating in a meeting, voting, saving money, taking medicine or allowing a child to go to school. If a programme fails to provide the necessary information or means to encourage the desired behavioural change the programme is unlikely to be successful.
​
Behavioural Science (BeSci) can help enable interventions to produce the desired behavioural change. Behaviourally informed interventions leverage what is known about human behaviour and decision-making, and invest in better diagnosing specific behavioural barriers and enablers to help people achieve their aims.
​
Behavioural science provides an evidence-based understanding of how people actually respond to policies, programmes and incentives.
​
In the UN system, interventions leveraging behavioural science are being piloted and applied at the country level and at Headquarters, with early evidence showing clear impact. These successes suggest that there is tremendous potential for impact if this approach can be widely used and embedded across the United Nations.
​
​
_1.jpeg)
UN WOMEN
The UN Behavioural Science Group fosters BeSci application across the UN and beyond
Our vision
We envision a future where the UN is more effective and efficient, evidence-based and scales learnings through a realistic understanding of human behaviour.
Our aim
Supported by the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General and UN Innovation Network, UN Behavioural Science fosters the application of behavioural science to achieve impact in the UN and beyond.
Our focus
We place an emphasis on applying behavioural science to policy, programming and reducing administrative burden tackling some of the most pressing issues of today.
Founded in 2019 and supported by the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General and the UN Innovation Network, the UN Behavioural icnece Group fosters and supports the application of behavioural science across the UN and beyond.
​
​
​
UNDP
Our areas of focus
Health
Gender
Climate
Peace & Security
Administrative burden & barriers
Artificial intelligence/
Data
Digital transformation
​
Mis/Disinformation
Multi-country experiments
Consultation with colleagues across the UN identified five key areas of opportunity for the application of behavioural science - we support UN Entities across these and other topical areas.
​
We are also working to tackle cross-cutting issues such as behavioural science and artificial intelligence/data, digital transformation, mis/disinformation, ethics and multi-country experiments leveraging learnings across the diverse contexts the UN operates.
Who we are
UN Women
Established & long-standing
Building upon behavioural science work in the UN since the early 2010s, our core team has fostered behavioural science since 2018.
Our work began with bringing together working level UN colleagues in the first annual UN Behavioural Science Week with the UN Innovation Network, through to fostering behavioural science in senior level priorities and plans with the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General.
UN Impact
I'm a paragraph. Click here to add your own text and edit me. It's easy.