Haiti may well be the only country in the Americas with a last name. References to the land of the "black Jacobins" are almost always followed by the phrase "the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere". To that dubious distinction, on 12 January 2010 Haiti added another, when it was hit by the most devastating natural disaster in the Americas, a 7.0 Richter scale earthquake. More than 220,000 people lost their lives and much of its vibrant capital, Port-au-Prince, was reduced to rubble. Since 2004, the United Nations has been in Haiti through MINUSTAH, in an ambitious attempt to help Haiti raise itself by its bootstraps. This effort has now acquired additional urgency. Is Haiti a failed state? Does it deserve a Marshall-plan-like program? What will it take to address the Haitian predicament? In this book, some of the world's leading experts on Haiti examine the challenges faced by the first black republic, the tasks undertaken by the UN, and the new role of hemispheric players like Argentina, Brazil and Chile, as well as that of Canada, France and the United States.

Issue for 1946-47 includes a summary of the organization's activities from its inception to July 1, 1947.

Beginning in 1983/84 published in 3 vols., with expansion to 6 vols. by 2007/2008: vol. 1--Organization descriptions and cross references; vol. 2--Geographic volume: international organization participation; vol. 3--Subject volume; vol. 4--Bibliography and resources; vol. 5--Statistics, visualizations and patterns; vol. 6--Who's who in international organizations. (From year to year some slight variations in naming of the volumes).