Building reliable, accessible, shareable knowledge for all

"Wikiproject for a United Nations of knowledge: Building reliable, accessible, shareable knowledge for all” has been selected by the Japan Association for the 2025 World Exposition as a Best Practice and will be showcased at Expo 2025 in Osaka, Japan.  

Presented by FAO in collaboration with UNESCO, Wikimedia Sverige and Wikimedia UK, the project consists of enriching Wikipedia with UN knowledge resources to help people access, build and share reliable, multilingual, open content.  

UN agencies bring together expert knowledge and data from across the world, working collaboratively across multiple countries, languages, and areas of expertise to realize the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In turn, Wikipedia is one of the largest online communities, with over 100 000 regular contributors working together to educate people in 300+ languages.  

The "Wikiproject for a United Nations of knowledge" brings individuals and organizations from across the world closer together in a joint effort to make this knowledge available to understand and address the world's most pressing challenges. The project involves: 

• working with the Wikipedia community of editors to share text, images and data from UNESCO, FAO and other UN agencies to further the achievement of the SDGs, in compliance with Wikipedia's policies relating to neutrality, verifiability and sources; 

• mapping topics missing from Wikipedia and filling gaps by working with the Wikipedia community to draw on relevant UN knowledge resources; 

• building capacity among UN agencies to share knowledge on Wikipedia with the help of processes and documentation established with the expertise of Wikimedia Sweden and Wikimedia UK; 

• providing guidance to sustain and grow this work as a long-term collective effort. 

The selected Best Practices will be showcased both virtually and in-presence, on the Expo’s official website and in the Best Practice Area at the Expo 2025. 

About the Best Practice programme at Expo 2025 Osaka, Japan 

First launched in 2010 at Expo Shanghai, Best Practice is an Expo programme that identifies high-quality projects that have a positive impact on important global issues. The 2025 Expo theme is “Designing Future Society for Our Lives”.  

About FAO’s work with Wikipedia 

FAO has been collaborating with Wikipedia since 2019. As at November 2024, there are over 88 Wikipedia articles, viewed over 3 million times a month, incorporating FAO’s open content relating to food security, food safety, forestry, fisheries and plant genetic resources, among other areas. In addition, graphics drawn from FAO publications appear on articles viewed almost 8 million times a month.