This resolution, drafted by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), aims to mainstream global attempts to facilitate scientific innovation for sustainable development.

Its importance lies in engaging with the vast array of rights-based science and technology issues — including research systems, knowledge divides and cyber-security — and its explicit attempts to ground scientific and technological advance within the framework for achieving the UN's Millennium Development Goals.

It presents a series of recommendations for consideration by national governments, the UN Commission on Science and Technology for Development, and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). These include mainstreaming science and technology promotion and investment in governments' national development plans; providing suitable working conditions for scientific talent, particularly women and young graduates, to prevent brain drain; identifying critical gaps in countries' innovation systems; and developing a clearing house for common development challenges that can be addressed through scientific, technological and innovation-related issues.

This briefing paper, published by the Royal Society and part of its Atlas of Islamic-World Science and Innovation project, summarises recent scientific and technological advances across the Islamic world and draws attention to the barriers to further and faster progress.

The authors present case studies of successful projects in Nigeria, Pakistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and examine the role of women in science in the Islamic world, and the effects of governance, policy and the media.