UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice (United Nations Intellectual History Project Series) by Thomas G. Weiss, Richard Jolly, Louis Emmerij, Tatiana Carayannis

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Synopsis

"The authors have cajoled, intrigued, or reassured their 73 'voices' into telling a fascinating story of the UN and its institutions, which is also a story of 73 individual lives, of women and men... with their own complicated histories of emigration and education, family relationships and professional choices, hopes and successes." — from the Foreword by Emma Rothschild

"Far from being a distant bureaucracy, the UN is composed of individuals who are reshaped by vital experiences. UN Voices gives international civil servants human faces and shows how ideas drive the grand experiment. It is a fascinating book." — Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

UN Voices presents the human and moving stories of an extraordinary group of individuals who contributed to the economic and social record of the UN's life and activities. Drawing from extensive interviews, the book presents in their own words the experiences of 73 individuals from around the globe who have spent much of their professional lives engaged in United Nations affairs. We hear from secretaries-general and presidents, ministers and professors, social workers and field workers, as well as diplomats and executive heads of UN agencies. Among those interviewed are noted figures such as Kofi Annan, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Alister McIntyre, Conor Cruise O'Brien, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, and Kurt Waldheim, as well as many less well known UN professional men and women who have made significant contributions to the international struggle for a better world. Their personal accounts also engage their contributions in dealing with such events and issues as the UN's founding, decolonization, the rise and fall of theBerlin Wall, human rights, the environment, and September 11, 2001.

Foreign Affairs

This fascinating account of the UN's half century of involvement in economic and social development weaves together the personal stories and recollections of 73 UN civil servants and experts. The high politics of the Security Council are well known, but this rich oral history offers a rare glimpse at the "second UN" — the semi-independent secretariats and professionals who conduct research, promote policy ideas, and shape critical programs. The narrative traces the evolution of UN institutions and activities from the 1945 founding through the rise of trade and development commissions and up to the proliferation of conferences on human rights, gender, the environment, and globalization. What is more interesting, it provides an absorbing intellectual history of the UN's efforts to translate ideas about sustainability, basic human needs, human security, and "the responsibility to protect" into programmatic forms of international cooperation. This book, an invaluable resource for both UN reformers and historians seeking to understand the UN's role in world affairs, shows convincingly that in the international marketplace of ideas, the UN has been a major commercial center.

Biography

Thomas G. Weiss is Presidential Professor of Political Science at The CUNY Graduate Center and Director of its Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.

Tatiana Carayannis is Research Manager of the United Nations Intellectual History Project.

Louis Emmerij is Senior Research Fellow at The CUNY Graduate Center's Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies.

Richard Jolly is Senior Research Fellow at The CUNY Graduate Center's Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies and Professor Emeritus at the University of Sussex.