A recent Reuters article revealed a striking inefficiency: most United Nations reports are barely read.

“The top 5% of reports are downloaded over 5,500 times, while one in five reports receives fewer than 1,000 downloads. And downloading doesn’t necessarily mean reading.”
— UN Secretary-General António Guterres

The UN secretariat produced 1,100 reports last year, supporting 27,000 meetings across 240 bodies. Guterres warned that this volume is pushing the system to the breaking point.

🧠 Why This Matters for Semantic Monitoring

This is exactly the kind of problem Rostral.io is designed to solve:

• Extract meaningful summaries from long institutional documents
• Highlight key provisions, mandates, and policy impact
• Enable targeted monitoring via YAML templates and LLM pipelines

If UN reports were semantically parsed and indexed, they could become searchable, digestible, and actionable — not just archived PDFs.

💬 Discussion Prompts

• What kinds of institutional reports are most in need of semantic monitoring?
• Could Rostral.io be adapted for organizations like the UN, EU, or national governments?
• What would a YAML template for a UN resolution or policy report look like?

This isn’t just a UN problem — it’s a global one. Governments, NGOs, and international bodies all produce massive volumes of underutilized documentation. Let’s explore how semantic pipelines can turn unread reports into usable intelligence.

Drop your thoughts, ideas, or YAML sketches below!