With its comprehensive coverage of political and security matters, human rights issues, economic and social questions, legal issues, and administrative and budgetary matters, the Yearbook of the United Nations stands as the authoritative reference work on the annual activities and concerns of the Organization. Fully indexed, the Yearbook includes all major General Assembly, Security Council and Economic and Social Council resolutions and decisions, uniquely placing them in a narrative context of United Nations consideration, deliberation and action. This sixty-eighth volume presents the work of the United Nations in dealing with recurring conflicts with severe humanitarian consequences including in the Syrian Arab Republic, where more than 12 million people were in need of basic food, clothing and shelter. The volume also highlights the Organization's rapid response to an escalatory global health emergency--the Ebola virus disease outbreak across West Africa. It documents the Organization's coordination of policy discussions to finalize a global sustainable development agenda, with the security of future generations as the core concern; and its efforts to rebuild societies emerging from conflict while keeping the fragile peace in other places. It further details the entry into force of the landmark Arms Trade Treaty, the missile downing of a passenger airliner in the midst of a geopolitical crisis in eastern Ukraine, and securing international human rights and humanitarian law and prosecuting abusers.

This yearbook contains documentary texts of treaties and other materials concerning the legal status and activities of the United Nations and related inter-governmental organizations. It also presents the judicial decisions on questions related to the Organization. A bibliography on jurisprudence is included.

Issued annually since 1946/47, the Yearbook is the principal reference work of the United Nations, providing a comprehensive, one-volume account of the Organization's work. It includes details of United Nations activities concerning trade, industrial development, natural resources, food, science & technology, social development, population, environment, human settlements, children & legal questions, along with information on the work of each specialized agency in the United Nations family. The Yearbook is an indispensable guide to the UN.

Consisting of 192 Member States, the United Nations was founded in 1945 to maintain international peace and security; to develop friendly relations among nations based on the respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples; to achieve international cooperation in solving problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character; and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion. Just how successful the UN has been in maintaining these goals is covered in The A to Z of the United Nations. Author Jacques Fomerand provides a comprehensive dictionary of nearly 900 cross-referenced entries on the UN's various committees and organizations, its leaders, terms, policies, and major events in which the UN took part. Supplementing the dictionary entries are a chronology, an introduction, a bibliography, and appendixes, which include a reproduction of the UN's Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as a list of the Member States and when they joined.

Established after World War II, the United Nations strives to save successive generations from the scourge of war. This vital world body has undoubtedly succeeded in resolving many conflicts through its political and peacekeeping missions, and nurtured peace through its development support, though not always with the efficiency and effectiveness expected of it. The world is vastly different today from the days when the United Nations was set up. The challenges that the United Nations faces in the 21st century are much more complex and deadly than they were 60 years ago. Reforming and reinventing the United Nations should therefore be a matter of great interest to the international community. To tackle the challenges ahead, the United Nations needs to re-engineer its organizational arrangements, reorient its processes, revamp its decision-making systems, and reform its human resource and financial management to get the best results from them. This book suggests measures for restructuring the Security Council, rationalizing the constituent systems of the General Assembly, the ECOSOC and the Secretariat, and strengthening the peacekeeping, corruption control and accountability mechanisms. The book is a collaborative endeavour, involving contributions from international authority figures in areas such as peace and security, development assistance, resource management, leadership and ethics. The vision projected by them on the major issues inscribed on the United Nations agenda is meant to encourage fresh thinking on the part of opinion leaders, diplomats, academics, experts in foreign affairs and UN staff, so that this intergovernmental institution could be effectively geared to respond to the emerging challenges of the 21st century. Reinventing the United Nations would be of interest to the public and particularly the postgraduate students of political science, international law, and international relations, as well as diplomats, public affairs professionals and social science scholars at various levels.