15 May 2013: The latest results of the MY World survey identify a good education, better health care and an honest and responsive government as the top three priorities for citizens around the world. Over 560,000 citizens from 194 countries have selected six of 16 issues that would make the most difference to their lives through MY World, a UN global options survey developed by the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Millennium Campaign, the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the World Wide Web Foundation.

Since MY World’s launch in December 2012, 35% of participants have voted through the website, with 57% of the votes collected offline and the remaining 8% via mobile phone. Corinne Woods, UN Millennium Campaign, emphasized that “these half a million votes are just a start–we have until 2015 and beyond to continue gathering people´s views and maintain this conversation flow between policy makers and citizens.”

The survey data illustrate global priorities by age, education level, gender and location. According to Claire Melamed, ODI, there is “a strong overlap of priorities among regions,” with education, health, water, food, an honest and responsive government and protection against crime and violence featuring among the top ten priorities for every region of the world. Agreement is found across genders, too, with men and women making the same top seven choices. Over 75% of voters are from developing countries, including 48% from countries classified as low human development countries, and 64% of voters are under 30.

MY World released the survey results to coincide with the fifth and final meeting of the UN High-level Panel on the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP 5), in New York, US, which is currently finalizing its report to the UN Secretary-General on the post-2015 agenda.

MY World also shares its results with the UN Secretary-General and the Open Working Group (OWG) on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). [MY World Press Release] [MY World Results] [IISD RS Story on MY World Launch]