The Report reaffirms UNESCO’s commitment to the social sciences, and our desire to set a new global agenda to

promote them as an invaluable tool for the advancement of the internationally agreed development goals. UNESCO,

with its emphasis on the management of social transformation, is concerned that the social sciences should be put to use

to improve human well-being and to respond to global challenges. As long ago as 1974, UNESCO’s General Conference

adopted a Recommendation on the Status of Scientific Researchers which emphasized ’the need to apply science and

technology in a great variety of specific fields of wider than national concern: namely such vast and complex problems as

the preservation of international peace and the elimination of want’.

In 1999, UNESCO published the first World Social

Science Report. Ten years later, UNESCO asked the

International Social Science Council (ISSC) to prepare

this second edition, which is published in 2010. The

main goal of this new Report is to present an overview

of the social sciences in the different areas of the world.