About the Book
a. The set generally
Since the publication of its first edition in 1950, the Annual Review of United Nations Affairs has stood as the authoritative resource for scholars, students, and practitioners researching the latest developments of that august body. From the insightful introduction, prepared each year by a distinguished expert on UN affairs, to the full-text presentation of reports and resolutions and the helpful subject index, ARUNA provides a practical tour of each year's U.N. actions and debates. The expert selection of documents by Joachim Muller and Karl Sauvant and the topic-based organization of those documents make any researcher's task much easier than the vast searching, sorting, and pruning required by the U.N.'s website. The series' topic-based organization of the materials and subject index lend invaluable guidance to all researchers.
ARUNA presents a comprehensive documentation of the work of the UN on an annual basis, starting in September of each year with the beginning of the regular sessions of the General Assembly. Coverage of the UN's key organs is provided, including the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), the International Court of Justice, and the UN Secretariat. In addition, selected reports of intergovernmental bodies and expert groups are included. Solely official UN documentation is used. ARUNA occupies a special place in the publications on the work of the UN--it allows readers to obtain an overview of the principal developments in its key organs. This makes it an important reference source for policy-makers and academic researchers.
b. The 2008-2009 volumes
The highlight of this year's edition is the introductory essay written by the highly esteemed Jose Antonio Ocampo, who is Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs, Director of the Program in Economic and Political Development at the School of International and Public Affairs, and Fellow of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. Professor Ocampo previously held the positions of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations for Economic and Social Affairs, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Minister of Finance of Colombia. In 2009, he was a member of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. Professor Ocampo is also the author of numerous books and articles on macroeconomics policy and theory, economic development, international trade, and economic history. His recent publications include Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development, with Joseph E. Stiglitz, Shari Spiegel, Ricardo Ffrench-Davis and Deepak Nayyar (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Professor Ocampo, relying on his expertise as a policy economist and his own considerable experience working on economic issues at the United Nations, has written an incisive introductory essay focusing on the United Nations and the global economic crisis. Professor Ocampo's essay examines the history of the economic policy recommendations of UN institutions and concludes that they have often been more far-sighted and accurate than those of the Bretton Woods Institutions, including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He applies this analysis in particular to the recent global financial crisis, and shows how the Monterrey Consensus of 2002, which once again made the UN a forum for global economic issues, gave serious consideration to the concerns of developing countries and set many goals that might have helped to stave off the global financial crisis if they had been more actively pursued. Professor Ocampo also examines the UN's role in the wake of the global financial meltdown, particularly with regard to the Doha follow-up Conference and the Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, convened by the General Assembly and led by Joseph Stiglitz. In spite of some resistance to these initiatives from the United States and other developed countries, Professor Ocampo advocates in this essay for a more influential role for the UN's institutions in global financial reform, especially in light of their superior track record in anticipating economic problems resulting from the inherent tendency of financial markets to experience boom-bust cycles.
The 2008-2009 volumes of ARUNA therefore also devote considerable attention to the financial crisis as well as other international crises. Among the documents in the 2008-2009 volumes are the complete General Assembly resolutions, as well as the Report and Resolutions of the Security Council and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Annual Reports of note include reports of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the UN Development Programme and UN Population Fund, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugee in the Near East, and the World Food Programme. Mr. Muller and Dr. Sauvant have also selected progress reports on key peacekeeping, peace-building, and political missions, including those for Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, Iraq, Kosovo, the Middle East, Somalia, Sudan, and West Africa.
c. Volume IV (this volume)
This volume contains the following:
Chapter 2: Security Council (continued)
B. Resolutions adopted by the Security Council
Chapter 3: Economic and Social Council
A. Report of the Economic and Social Council for 2009, A/63/3, 20 August 2009
B. Resolutions adopted by the Economic and Social Council
Chapter 4: Trusteeship Council
A. Trusteeship Council
Chapter 5: International Court of Justice
A. Report of the International Court of Justice, 1 August 2008-31 July 2009, A/64/4 (Supplement No. 4), 2009
d. Guest Authors of previous years' editions
Each annual edition of ARUNA is introduced by a Guest Author, a distinguished expert on UN affairs, who highlights the outstanding themes of the year in review. Together with an overview provided by the editors, this introduction is intended to facilitate access to the material and, above all, to make it easer for users of ARUNA to see the forest for the trees. As has been mentioned above, ARUNA is fortunate this year to have Jose Antonio Ocampo as the author of its introduction, but the roster of distinguished experts who have contributed this introduction in the past is also worthy of mention:
Jeffrey D. Sachs: ARUNA 2007/2008 edition
Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs is Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to the Secretary-General of the UN on the Millennium Development Goals. Professor Sachs's introduction to ARUNA 2007/2008 was titled Towards a New Global Protocol on Climate Change, in which he argued that solving the climate change problem will demand four steps: scientific consensus, public awareness, the development of alternative technologies, and a global framework for action. He dealt, in particular, with the science underpinning the negotiations for a new global protocol on climate change, as a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. Professor Sachs argued that climate change crises can only be solved through the goals, leadership, and treaty mechanisms of the UN.
Edward C. Luck: ARUNA 2006/2007 edition
Professor Edward C. Luck is UN Special Advisor on the Responsibility to Protect and Vice President and Director of Studies at the International Peace Academy. From 1984 to 1994, he served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the UN Association of the USA (UNA-USA). Professor Luck's introduction to ARUNA 2006/2007 covered The responsible sovereign and the responsibility to protect, in which he addressed the scope and content of what was agreed at the 2005 World Summit, the implications of the responsibility to protect (RtoP) for notions of state sovereignty, and some of the conceptual, architectural, and policy challenges then facing UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's commitment to operationalizing the responsibility to protect and translating it from words to deeds.
Louise Frechette: ARUNA 2005/2006 edition
Ms Louise Frechette is Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, Waterloo, Ontario. Until March 2006, she was the first Deputy Secretary-General of the UN; before that, she was Permanent Representative of Canada to the UN. Ms Frechette's introduction to ARUNA 2005/2006 covered United Nations reform: an unfinished story. As the first Deputy Secretary-General of the UN, Ms Frechette was uniquely positioned to undertake a personal assessment of what has changed and what has not changed in the past decade at the UN and why. She examined if the UN is functioning better than it was 15 years ago, why reform is so difficult to achieve and what the future holds for the institutions.
Rubens Ricupero: ARUNA 2004/2005 edition
Mr Rubens Ricupero is Dean of the Fundacno Armando Alvares Penteado (FAAP), Sao Paulo and was formerly Secretary-General of UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Minister of Finance of Brazil. Mr Ricupero's introduction to ARUNA 2004/2005 covered The difficulty of building consensus in an age of extremes and examined the mysteries of the negotiating process leading to the outcome of the 2005 World Summit. Rather than a Grand Bargain of a comprehensive UN reform in the areas of development, security and human rights, it is argued that the Summit ended more on a note of lamentation and regret over a missed opportunity. Mr Ricupero concludes that contrary to the daring proclamation at the outset by the Secretary-General, the conditions indispensable to succeed were not in place. Indeed, it was hard to imagine that an ambitious and balanced reform package for the UN could have had any real chance of succeedin
About the Author :
Joachim Muller is the Director for Resource Management at the World Meteorological Organization. In addition to his management of resource management for the World Meteorological Organization, Joachim Muller has also written several prominent books on UN matters, including the multi-volume work Reforming the United Nations.
Dr. Karl P. Sauvant is the Executive Director of the Vale Columbia Center on Sustainable International Investment; Research Scholar and Lecturer in Law at Columbia Law School; Co-Director of the Millennium Cities Initiative; Honorary Fellown of the European International Business Academy; Chatham House Foundation Fellow; Senior Advisor to the China Council for Investment Promotion; and Member of the International Advisory Council, International Center for Corporate Accountability, Baruch College, CUNY. He is also Guest Professor at Nankai University, China.
Until July 2005, Dr. Sauvant was Director of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD) Division on Investment, Technology and Enterprise Development (DITE), the focal point in the UN system for matters related to foreign direct investment (FDI) and technology, as well as a major interface with the private sector. While at the UN in 1991, he created the prestigious annual World Investment Report, of which he was the lead author until 2004. In 1992, Dr. Sauvant founded the journal Transnational Corporations, serving as its editor until 2005. He provided intellectual leadership and guidance to a series of 25 monographs on key issues related to international investment agreements, which were published in 2004/05 in three volumes, and he edited, with Dr. John H. Dunning, a 20-volume Library on Transnational Corporations (published by Routledge).
Dr. Sauvant joined the United Nations in 1973 and, as of 1975, has focused his work on matters related to FDI. Since 1988, he was responsible for the Organization's policy analysis work on FDI. In 2001, he became Director of DITE. His responsibilities included managing the Division; promoting international consensus-building in the areas of FDI, technology and enterprise development; providing intellectual leadership for policy-oriented research; and conceptualizing and supervising technical assistance activities in this field.
Apart from his work for the United Nations, Dr. Sauvant has published extensively on issues related to economic development, FDI and services. His name is associated with some 150 United Nations publications on FDI over the past three decades.
Dr. Sauvant received a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He is a national of Germany, married to Silvana F. da Silva, a national of Brazil.
Jose Antonio Ocampo, the author of the Introduction to this year's edition, is Professor of Professional Practice in International and Public Affairs, Director of the Program in Economic and Political Development at the School of International and Public Affairs, and Fellow of the Committee on Global Thought, Columbia University. Professor Ocampo previously held the positions of Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations for Economic and Social Affairs, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and Minister of Finance of Colombia. In 2009, he was a member of the Commission of Experts of the President of the United Nations General Assembly on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System. Professor Ocampo is also the author of numerous books and articles on macroeconomics policy and theory, economic development, international trade, and economic history. His recent publications include Stability with Growth: Macroeconomics, Liberalization and Development, with Joseph E. Stiglitz, Shari Spiegel, Ricardo Ffrench-Davis and Deepak Nayyar (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
