Front cover image for The parliament of man : the past, present, and future of the United Nations

The parliament of man : the past, present, and future of the United Nations

Scholar Kennedy gives a thorough history of the United Nations that explains the institution's roots and functions while also casting an eye on the UN's effectiveness as a body and on its prospects for success in meeting coming challenges. He makes sense of the commissions and committees, and how the six main operating bodies operate and interact. Citing examples from history, he shows how the five permanent members of the Security Council on numerous occasions overcame political antagonisms to spearhead military supervision of aid in humanitarian crises, and how lack of cooperation among the great powers has hamstrung such initiatives as the control of greenhouse gas emissions and exacerbated the deleterious effects of globalization on developing nations' economies. As a body, the UN emerges here for what it is: fallible, human-based, oftentimes dependent on the whims of powerful nations or the foibles of individual senior administrators, but utterly indispensable.--From publisher description
eBook, English, 2007, ©2006
1st Vintage books ed View all formats and editions
Vintage Books, New York, 2007, ©2006
History
1 online resource : illustrations
9780307387608, 0307387607
775468065
A note on the title
Preface
pt. 1: Origins. The troubled advance to a new world order, 1815-1945
pt. 2: The evolution of the many UNs since 1945. The conundrum of the Security Council
Peacekeeping and warmaking
Economic agendas, north and south
The softer face of the UN' mission
Advancing international human rights
"We the peoples" : democracy, governments, and nongovernmental actors
pt. 3: The present and the future. The promise and peril of the twenty-first century
Afterword
Appendix: Charter of the United Nations
Originally published: New York : Random House, 2006