The Third UN is the ecology of supportive non-state actors-intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for-profit private sector, and the media-that interacts with the intergovernmental machinery of the First UN (member states) and the Second UN (staff members of international secretariats) to formulate and refine ideas and decision-making at key junctures in policy processes. Some advocate for particular ideas, others help analyze or operationalize their testing and implementation; many thus help the UN 'think'. While think tanks, knowledge brokers, and epistemic communities are phenomena that have entered both the academic and policy lexicons, their intellectual role remains marginal to analyses of such intergovernmental organizations as the United Nations.

Seven decades after its establishment, the United Nations and its system of related organizations and programs are perpetually in crisis. While the twentieth-century’s world wars gave rise to ground-breaking efforts at international organization in 1919 and 1945, today’s UN is ill-equipped to deal with contemporary challenges to world order. Neither the end of the Cold War nor the aftermath of 9/11 has led to the “next generation” of multilateral institutions. But what exactly is wrong with the UN that makes it incapable of confronting contemporary global challenges and, more importantly, can we fix it? In this revised and updated third edition of his popular text, leading scholar of global governance Thomas G. Weiss takes a diagnose-and-cure approach to the world organization’s inherent difficulties. In the first half of the book, he considers: the problems of international leadership and decision making in a world of self-interested states; the diplomatic complications caused by the artificial divisions between the industrialized North and the global South; the structural problems of managing the UN’s many overlapping jurisdictions, agencies, and bodies; and the challenges of bureaucracy and leadership. The second half shows how to mitigate these maladies and points the way to a world in which the UN’s institutional ills might be “cured.” Weiss’s remedies are not based on pious hopes of a miracle cure for the UN, but rather on specific and encouraging examples that could be replicated. With considered optimism and in contrast to received wisdom, he contends that substantial change is both plausible and possible.

This unique book investigates the implications of the rising importance of supra-national regional organizations for global governance in general, and for the United Nations, in particular. It touches upon issues such as regional representation at the UN, high-level dialogues with regional organisations, as well as the coordination of UN member states’ voting behaviour in the UN General Assembly and the UN Security Council. The book further explores the regional dimension and coordination of UN operations in areas such as peace and security, human rights, and sustainable development. The contributions to the book are both in-depth chapters and shorter viewpoints, written by a combination of academics, policy-makers at regional organizations, and experts from international think tanks. The book is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of global governance.

A collection of United Nations documents associated with the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, these volumes facilitate research into the scope of, meaning of and intent behind the instrument's provisions. It permits an examination of the various drafts of what became the thirty articles of the Declaration, including one of the earliest documents – a compilation of human rights provisions from national constitutions, organised thematically. The documents are organised chronologically and thorough thematic indexing facilitates research into the origins of specific rights and norms. It is also annotated in order to provide information relating to names, places, events and concepts that might have been familiar in the late 1940s but are today more obscure.

This short introduction to the United Nations analyzes the organization as itis today, and how it can be transformed to respond to its critics. Combiningessential information about its history and workings with practical proposalsof how it can be strengthened, Trent and Schnurr examine what needs to bedone, and also how we can actually move toward the required reforms. Thisbook is written for a new generation of change-makers — a generation seekingbetter institutions that reflect the realities of the 21st century and that can actcollectively in the interest of all.

The Third UN is the ecology of supportive non-state actors-intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for-profit private sector, and the media-that interacts with the intergovernmental machinery of the First UN (member states) and the Second UN (staff members of international secretariats) to formulate and refine ideas and decision-making at key junctures in policy processes. Some advocate for particular ideas, others help analyze or operationalize their testing and implementation; many thus help the UN 'think'. While think tanks, knowledge brokers, and epistemic communities are phenomena that have entered both the academic and policy lexicons, their intellectual role remains marginal to analyses of such intergovernmental organizations as the United Nations.