Product Description
In this thoughtful, balanced biography, former Los Angeles Times foreign and diplomatic correspondent Stanley Meisler traces Kofi Annan’s unconventional rise from optimistic student to striving personnel and budget specialist in the United Nations bureaucracy to full-time manager of the world’s crises. The book presents a unique portrait of this widely admired leader, with Annan’s own view of events tempered and augmented by those of his allies and opponents, defenders and detractors. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Kofi Annan - in the eye of the storm
The United Nations is becalmed. Kofi Annan, the courtly, quietly-spoken Ghanaian, a fixture on our television screens for a decade, has gone; his successor as secretary general, Ban Ki-Moon, has yet to stamp his personality on the world body.



In the hiatus Stanley Meisler, journalist, author, UN insider, has led the inevitable rush to publish a summation of the Annan years. He is well qualified to do so.



The dustcover of this book is a pointer to the treatment Meisler gives his subject in a biography which Annan did not authorise, but did not try to block. The former secretary general is pictured half in shadow, looking worried, almost shifty in his dark, pin-striped business suit.



It is not the image we are used to, yet in many ways appropriate, because this was a secretary generalship of sunshine and shadow - the Nobel Peace Prize and the oil-for-food scandal; East Timorese independence and always and inevitably, the Iraq conflict.



It was a time of steadily worsening relations between the UN and the United States, although the antagonism began well before Annan took office and continued despite his best efforts to find a middle way. His relations with the Clinton White House, always testy after the bombing of Serbia during the Kosovo crisis, plunged to new depths when the neo-conservative-dominated Bush Administration took office in 2001.



He was powerless to influence a presidency determined to avenge the death and destruction of 9/11. The fact he even tried earned condemnation and while President George W. Bush may have talked about the "unique legitimacy" of the United Nations, in the minds of those at the White House the uniqueness and the legitimacy existed only when it was bestowed on the US to do what it wanted to do.



Key Bush adviser Richard Perle openly looked forward to the death of the UN in the wake of the initially successful invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the ultimate insult was delivered with the appointment of the far right ideologue, John Bolton, as American Ambassador to the international body.



The fiction that Bolton was there to promote UN reform was paper thin. As Meisler writes, there were plenty of institutions that needed the reforming touch including, after the 2000 election, the American system of casting and counting votes. "But the clamour for UN reform was different. It was incessant, very loud and very suspicious"....coming too often from "American ideologues who wanted to paint a false image of the UN as corrupt, slovenly, wasteful, inefficient and anti-American".



Throughout these turbulent times, Annan struggled to enhance what little clout the UN possessed in whatever way he could. While his predecessor, Egyptian Boutros Boutros-Ghali, had been a remote figure, Annan took to the celebrity circuit, becoming a fixture in New York society, attending an endless round of parties giving and receiving advice whenever and wherever he could. While naturally a charming man, one has the feeling that this was not his ideal modus operandi, but circumstances forced him to play the public relations card



Meisler reveals the endless sniping from Washington took its toll on the secretary general. He suffered two bouts of depression to the point where a sympathetic French President, Jacques Chirac, pleaded with him: "You must pull yourself together". On the second occasion at the height of the row over oil-for-food with the American right baying for his blood, a number of colleague persuaded Annan to attend two secret meetings "to shake him out of his low feelings". It is a measure of the man that he responded and returned to task with renewed vigour.



For me some of the most interesting parts of this book deal with Annan's early life. A long-serving UN bureaucrat, he worked mostly out of sight behind the scenes and it was only in the early 1990s that he emerged as a possible contender for the top job. The young Kofi was an athlete with an eye for the girls who briefly considered a career as a businessman running a flour mill in Ghana and served a short term as that country's tourism chief.



Even when he was settled at the UN, his ultimate ambition did not stretch beyond assistant secretary general rank, but fate decreed otherwise.



This is a thoroughly readable book which sheds light on a complicated, brilliant yet vulnerable individual who steered the UN safely though some of the worst years in its history. Whether this course can be maintained by his successor remains to be seen.

Impressive, intriguing and recommended
I liked this book very much because it covers the entire life of a remarkable man, who I admire so much. I am thankful to Meisler for this in-depth, objective and complete account of so many little-known facts and events from the life of Kofi Annan that I am sure will urge you to read it cover to cover. There is a lot you can and will learn from this book and that's why I highly recommend it. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (9)

Profiles of diplomacy
This book follows the career of Kofi Annan from his days as a foreign student in America to his term as UN secretary general.The author, thru interviews of Annan and those he dealt with, uses Annan's career to trace the history of the UN from its inception at the end of WWII to its impotence at the onrush of American power after the 9/11 attacks.The book's story is told chronologically, and lays out the complex, and often hidden relationships between the UN's career bureaucrats, and member states like the US, Russia, China, etc...Included in this story are many of the key issues the UN has tackled over the past 5 decades; such as the Israeli - Palestinian conflict, Saddam Hussein and the 2 Iraq wars, possible expansion of the permanent Security Council, and the North vs South dichotomy.All of these struggles are told thru the career of Kofi Annan; how he dealt with them, he he was affected by them, and sometimes, how he was defeated by them.But the climax of the book is best showed by the front cover; a polite, unassuming black man who has seen too much of the world getting browbeaten by a loud white man who wants to take over the world.

The principal drawback of the book is the over-emphasis of the role of nations, and the minimal mention of the role of NGO's and corporations.Groups like the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, and various religious missionary groups all get short-thrifted by this book.And corporations are almost non-existent.This is a big hole in the book's treatment as many countries' domestic and foreign policies are driven by corporations.So overall, an OK book.

Doing a good job that is impossible
The author has had a unique opportunity to personally follow what Kofi Annan did as a leader of the UN as its leaderand acting interacting directly with heads of states of many counties. After reading the book you can become more optimistic or more pessimistic about the future of the UN. The successes like the liberation of Kuwait and dealing with the Tsunami effects in Indonesia are very important successes. Successes are only possible if all of the members of the Security Council agree and see to it that the actions and resources necessary to solve a problem are made available. That, unfortunately, is rare.
The book does not give much indications as to how the many shortcomings of the UNcan be solved. If you are an optimist you hope that with a competent leader, like Annan, and changes in attitudes of country governments much progress can be made. If you are a pessimist, you expect that the UN will just muddle along. I am an optimist and think that the book is an excellent starting point to generate practical ideas on how to improve the performance of the UN.

spot on
With insight, wit and stores of knowledge about the UN and world affairs, James Traub paints a sympathetic but brutally honest portrait of Kofi Annan as Secy=General. Five star.

Timely study of the UN and the challenges of global leadership
The strengths of this excellent book far outweigh its weaknesses.It is especially compelling as a case study of leadership in a deeply flawed but essential institution. Traub's had access to Kofi Annan, as well as Annan's chief lieutenants at the UN, over an extended period of time that included his early successes, the events prior to the Iraq war and the Iraq "Oil for Food" scandal.Through the text we gain an understanding of the inner workings of the infamously cumbersome UN bureaucracy as well as the impossible constraints placed upon it by the United States government and the 191 other member states. Annan's early successes as Secretary General were substantial; yet his passive style of leadership made him very vulnerable. He ultimately paid a severe price. Traub documents Annan's physical and mental breakdowns and the blow to his reputation caused by his failure to properly monitor the Oil for Food program.

The book would have benefited from a section with further details on the overwhelming complexity of the UN organization and the lack of power of the Secretary General to control it.Traub also occasionally feels compelled to engage in weak, superficial "fair and balanced" analysis that is not helpful to the overall narrative.Overall, however, this is a fine book that is a useful way to learn about the challenges of running the UN.

An Impossible Role
FDR was a leading proponent of the U.N. after WWII had proven the League of Nations (formed in response ti WWI) ineffectual.His vision was that the "four policemen" (U.S., Nationalist China, Russia, and Britain) would be able to prevent WWIII.

Unfortunately, it is hard to think good thoughts about the U.N. as it currently operates, given its consistent failures in Darfur, Iraq, Serbia, Congo, Zimbabwe, and the Mid-East, as well as in the areas of nuclear non-proliferation, global warming, and HIV/AIDS.However, it is much harder to think of a realistic and better alternative, given the high-level and intense jockeying for power by the U.S., Russia, and China, and Iran, Venezuela, Iraq, India, and others taking advantage of every opportunity to increase their own agendas.

In the midst of this never-ending squabbling, Kofi Annan, with little personal power within the U.N. and tarred by his son's role in the "Oil for Food" scandal, tries to convert his best intentions into constructive action.Predictably, he fails.

Hopefully "The Best Intentions" will lead the way to effective reform of the U.N., and we won't need a WWIII to come up with a better alternative. ... Read more

Product Description
Kenya went to the polls in December 27, 2007. The presidential votes were not properly tallied. The incumbent was declared the winner. The opposition protested the results. They took to the streets bringing all businesses to a standstill. Violence broke out in western Kenya where the opposition enjoyed much support. There was looting and setting on fire property of their rivals.The Kalenjin tribe came out armed with arrows, bows and machetes and started killing and torching houses belonging to other tribes they have been living with for over forty years and asking them to leave. The politicians were unable to sit down and sort out the chaos. African Union intervened and they agreed to sit down under the chairmanship of Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of United Nations. Kofi spent a whole month in Kenya and he finally succeeded to make the two groups to agree to work together in a government of national unit which cooled the political temperatures in the country. Mogaka a Kenyan national living a broad, who was closely monitoring the unfortunate development goes to Kenya and finds out the truth by himself. He talks to his people who gave him first hand information. Mogaka found out that the conflict had displaced people from their homes, families have been separated, and people have been chased away from their work place. The conflict has had an effect in the social integration in Kenya. With the leaders agreeing to share the government, the Kenyan population is promised of peace and stability. The credit goes to Kofi Annan who worked hard to broker the agreement. The people of Kenya have agreed to honour Kofi by naming all new born baby boys after him. The wild life wardens have already named a baby rhino after him. ... Read more

Product Description
A biography of the Ghanaian statesman who was elected Secretary General of the United Nations in 1997. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

OK book about a very bad man.
Kofi Annan is a sick man and a dangerous one at that.Kofi Annan: The Peacekeeper is ironic in that Annan has been indirectly and directly responsible for the deaths of many people due his being asleep at the wheel at the UN, support for Arafar, etc.

Jeff Jacoby recently wrote that he is basically a symptom of UN's sickness.Jacoby noted that just last week, Annanwoke up to a Wall Street Journal column by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, publisher of the influential InstaPundit website, urging that he be replaced by Vaclav Havel, the much-admired former president of the Czech Republic.

In The New York Times, op-ed eminence William Safire reviewed the revelations that link the massive oil-for-food scandal to Annan's own family: Until this year, his son Kojo was getting monthly payments from a firm that had a major oil-for-food contract with the UN -- even though he'd left the company in 1998. The corruption enveloping the UN will not begin to dissipate, Safire wrote, until Annan resigns, "having, through initial ineptitude and final obstructionism, brought dishonor on the Secretariat of the United Nations."

Meanwhile, the latest National Review was out, with its cover photo of Annan and the headline, in large red letters: "You're Fired!" An editorial inside insisted that "Annan should either resign, if he is honorable, or be removed, if he is not," while an essay by Nile Gardiner, a former aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, explained why "Kofi's hour is up." With his record, Gardiner observed, "if Annan were the CEO of a Fortune 500 company . . . he would have been forced to resign months ago."

On Wednesday came another call for Annan's ouster, this one from the chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has amassed evidence that Saddam Hussein used stolen oil-for-food dollars to underwrite terrorism and suborn at least one senior UN official. It is "abundantly clear" that Kofi Annan should resign, Senator Norm Coleman said. "As long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks, and under-the-table payments that took place under the UN's collective nose."

But odds are the world won't much care about getting to the bottom of the latest UN scandal. UN scandals rarely provoke lasting outrage. There was no global uproar when the brutal regime in Libya was chosen to chair the UN's Human Rights Commission. Nothing happened to the UN after its troops allowed Serbs to slaughter 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica. Sex scandals seem to erupt wherever the UN goes -- the latest involves charges of rape, child abuse, and prostitution by UN personnel in the Congo -- but they never cause heads to roll in Turtle Bay. Annan himself became secretary general despite his failure, when he headed the UN's peacekeeping operations, to pay attention to warnings of genocide in Rwanda.

Why should anything be different this time? Oil-for-food may be the greatest international rip-off of modern times, it may have strengthened one of the world's bloodiest dictators, but if history is any guide, the scandal headlines will fade from view long before the secretary general does. By week's end, in fact, dozens of governments, including all the permanent members of the Security Council save the United States, had publicly rallied to Annan's support. Scandal or no scandal, he will almost certainly serve out the remaining two years of his term.

Which is just as well. Annan is merely a symptom of the UN's sickness, not the cause of it. His resignation would do nothing to reform the UN into the engine of peace and liberty its founders envisioned. Better that Annan remain in place as a symbol of UN fecklessness and failure, and a spur to those who can envision something better.

The UN is a corrupt institution, one that long ago squandered whatever moral legitimacy it had. The UN's founding documents venerate justice and human rights, but for the past 40 years, the organization has been dominated by a bloc of states -- essentially the Afro-Asian Third World -- most of whose governments routinely pervert justice and violate human rights.

Inside the United Nations, there is no difference between a dictatorship or a democracy: Each gets exactly one vote in the General Assembly. The reason the UN indulges vicious regimes like those in North Korea, Syria, and Cuba is that they are members in good standing, and most other governments lack the courage to cross them. The UN cannot be fixed unless that changes -- and that isn't going to change.

Kofi is a bad man.

Needs more depth
Tessitore's biography of Kofi Annan leaves the reader with only very vague insight into the life of the seventh Secretary-General to the United Nations.After only a few pages, it becomes evident that the author himself couldn't possibly have known too much about Mr. Annan.Thus, it was no surprise to learn later that Tessitore had never even had an opportunity to interview with the UN Secretary-General.

As a biography, Tessitore's account left me dissatisfied, since it gave me little detail about the life of Kofi Annan.It would be a perfect option for someone seeking only a very broad understanding of Mr. Annan's background.Considering he had access to scarce information himself, I guess Tessitore did a good job.But this begs the question: Why write a biography on a man you know very little about? ... Read more

Product Description
In many of today's conflicts, civilians have become the main targets of violence. The question of intervention has become quite a debatable subject because of the respect for sovereignty of states as dictated by the UN Charter. This publication contains statements delivered by the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan, between June 1998 and October 1999, on the subject of intervention. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

there is nothing worth quoting about Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan is a sick man and a dangerous one at that.

Jeff Jacoby recently wrote that he is basically a symptom of UN's sickness.Jacoby noted that just last week, Annanwoke up to a Wall Street Journal column by Glenn Harlan Reynolds, publisher of the influential InstaPundit website, urging that he be replaced by Vaclav Havel, the much-admired former president of the Czech Republic.

In The New York Times, op-ed eminence William Safire reviewed the revelations that link the massive oil-for-food scandal to Annan's own family: Until this year, his son Kojo was getting monthly payments from a firm that had a major oil-for-food contract with the UN -- even though he'd left the company in 1998. The corruption enveloping the UN will not begin to dissipate, Safire wrote, until Annan resigns, "having, through initial ineptitude and final obstructionism, brought dishonor on the Secretariat of the United Nations."

Meanwhile, the latest National Review was out, with its cover photo of Annan and the headline, in large red letters: "You're Fired!" An editorial inside insisted that "Annan should either resign, if he is honorable, or be removed, if he is not," while an essay by Nile Gardiner, a former aide to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, explained why "Kofi's hour is up." With his record, Gardiner observed, "if Annan were the CEO of a Fortune 500 company . . . he would have been forced to resign months ago."

On Wednesday came another call for Annan's ouster, this one from the chairman of the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has amassed evidence that Saddam Hussein used stolen oil-for-food dollars to underwrite terrorism and suborn at least one senior UN official. It is "abundantly clear" that Kofi Annan should resign, Senator Norm Coleman said. "As long as Mr. Annan remains in charge, the world will never be able to learn the full extent of the bribes, kickbacks, and under-the-table payments that took place under the UN's collective nose."

But odds are the world won't much care about getting to the bottom of the latest UN scandal. UN scandals rarely provoke lasting outrage. There was no global uproar when the brutal regime in Libya was chosen to chair the UN's Human Rights Commission. Nothing happened to the UN after its troops allowed Serbs to slaughter 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the "safe haven" of Srebrenica. Sex scandals seem to erupt wherever the UN goes -- the latest involves charges of rape, child abuse, and prostitution by UN personnel in the Congo -- but they never cause heads to roll in Turtle Bay. Annan himself became secretary general despite his failure, when he headed the UN's peacekeeping operations, to pay attention to warnings of genocide in Rwanda.

Why should anything be different this time? Oil-for-food may be the greatest international rip-off of modern times, it may have strengthened one of the world's bloodiest dictators, but if history is any guide, the scandal headlines will fade from view long before the secretary general does. By week's end, in fact, dozens of governments, including all the permanent members of the Security Council save the United States, had publicly rallied to Annan's support. Scandal or no scandal, he will almost certainly serve out the remaining two years of his term.

Which is just as well. Annan is merely a symptom of the UN's sickness, not the cause of it. His resignation would do nothing to reform the UN into the engine of peace and liberty its founders envisioned. Better that Annan remain in place as a symbol of UN fecklessness and failure, and a spur to those who can envision something better.

The UN is a corrupt institution, one that long ago squandered whatever moral legitimacy it had. The UN's founding documents venerate justice and human rights, but for the past 40 years, the organization has been dominated by a bloc of states -- essentially the Afro-Asian Third World -- most of whose governments routinely pervert justice and violate human rights.

Inside the United Nations, there is no difference between a dictatorship or a democracy: Each gets exactly one vote in the General Assembly. The reason the UN indulges vicious regimes like those in North Korea, Syria, and Cuba is that they are members in good standing, and most other governments lack the courage to cross them. The UN cannot be fixed unless that changes -- and that isn't going to change.

Kofi is a bad man. ... Read more

Product Description

Few names are so closely connected with the cause of human rights as that of Mary Robinson. As former President of Ireland, she was ideally positioned for passionately and eloquently arguing the case for human rights around the world. Over five tumultuous years that included the tragic events of 9/11, she offered moral leadership and vision to the global human rights movement. This volume is a unique account in Robinson's own words of her campaigns as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

A Voice for Human Rights offers an edited collection of Robinson's public addresses, given between 1997 and 2002, when she served as High Commissioner. The book also provides the first in-depth account of the work of the Office of High Commissioner for Human Rights. With a foreword by Kofi Annan and an afterword by Louise Arbour, the current High Commissioner for Human Rights, the book will be of interest to all concerned with international human rights, international relations, development, and politics.

Product Description
The Secretary-General of the United Nations is a unique figure in world politics. At once civil servant, the world's diplomat, lackey of the UN Security Council, and commander-in-chief of up to a hundred thousand peacekeepers, he or she depends on states for both the legitimacy and resources that enable the United Nations to function. The tension between these roles - of being secretary or general - has challenged every incumbent. This book brings together the insights of senior UN staff, diplomats and scholars to examine the normative and political factors that shape this unique office with particular emphasis on how it has evolved in response to changing circumstances such as globalization and the onset of the 'war on terror'. The difficulties experienced by each Secretary-General reflect the profound ambivalence of states towards entrusting their security, interests or resources to an intergovernmental body. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

The most impossible job in the world
A very good summary of the experience of the past Secretary-General ... Read more

Product Description

Ideas and concepts have been a driving force in human progress, and they may be the most important legacy of the United Nations. UN ideas have set past, present, and future international agendas in many global economic and social arenas and have also led to initiatives and actions that have improved the quality of human life. This capstone volume draws upon findings of the other 14 books in the acclaimed United Nations Intellectual History Project Series. The authors not only assess the development and implementation of UN ideas regarding sustainable economic development and human security, but also apply lessons learned to suggest ways in which the United Nations can play a fuller role in confronting the challenges of human survival with dignity in the 21st century.

Product Description
Sharing the Front Line and the Back Hills points to acrisis facing international institutions and the media who seek toalleviate and report human suffering throughout the world. The goalsof the editor are to tell the story of thousands of individualsdedicated to helping others; and to integrate issues of protection andcare into all levels of planning, implementing and evaluatinginternational intervention and action. The book identifies approachesthat have proven useful and explores and suggests futuredirections. The book reports comprehensively existing empiricalknowledge about stress and post traumatic stress reactions andassociated interventions among military peacekeepers, and representsthe first significant effort to publish comparable research on theircivilian counterparts. Interwoven among the chapters are "voices"whose authors express in personal and moving terms the impact of theirexperiences. This volume consists of six sections, subdivided intochapters according to the type of international protectors andproviders (United Nation’s military and nonmilitary peacekeepers andpeace builders; civilian staff of the UN system, volunteers,non-governmental organizations, and the media); the organizations theyrepresent; their focus (such as women, children and forensic work);the nature of knowledge (data-based, descriptive, and reflectiveexperiential) and challenges and remedies (such as psychological,educational, legal and political). The concluding chapter elaboratespolicy and program recommendations ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A very needed book that tells it like it is
Mixing vignettes from aid workers and short articles that address issues and roles in the international aid community, this volume tells the hard side of aid work.The voices of aid workers describe terror, loneliness, and lingering psychosocial problems for which they receive no help and no resources, as well as the courage and dedication of the professionals that face dangers that are unimaginable to most people in the United States.Anyone thinking of working in international development should read this book first, and then ask themelves what skills, knowledge or support they will need to face the kinds of situations that are faced by the aid workers in this book.They should not count on getting much help from aid organizations. ... Read more

Product Description
The world’s freshwater resources are coming under growing pressure through such environmental hazards as human waste, urbanization, industrialization, and pesticides. The problems are exacerbated through drought in many parts of the world. The improvement of the water quality itself and access to it have been major concerns for politicians and development agencies for over a decade. First officially formulated at the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, they have been restated or expanded since then.

The UN Millennium Declaration of 2000 transformed general guidelines into specific targets. The international community pledged "to halve by 2015 the proportion of people who are unable to reach, or to afford, safe drinking water" and "to stop the unsustainable exploitation of water resources, by developing water management strategies at the regional, national and local levels, which promote both equitable access and adequate supplies." Thus, ten years after Rio it is time to take stock.

Based on the collective inputs of 23 United Nations agencies and convention secretariats, this Report offers a global overview of the state of the world’s freshwater resources. It is part of an on-going assessment process to develop policies and help with their implementation as well as to measure any progress towards achieving sustainable use of water resources.

Generously illustrated with more than 25 full-color global maps and numerous figures, the report reviews progress and trends and presents seven pilot case studies of river basins representing various social, economic and environmental settings: Lake Titicaca (Bolivia, Peru); Senegal river basin (Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea); Seine Normandy (France); Lake Peipsi/Chudskoe (Estonia, Russia); Ruhuna basin (Sri Lanka); Greater Tokyo region (Japan); and Chao Phraya (Thailand). It assesses progress in 11 challenge areas, including health, food, environment, shared water resources, cities, industry, energy, risk management, knowledge, valuing water and governance. Proposing methodologies and indicators for measuring sustainability, it lays the foundations for regular, system-wide monitoring and reporting by the UN, together with the development of standardized methodologies and data.

With its comprehensive maps, glossary, references and coverage of a broad range of themes and examples of real-world river basins, the UN World Water Development Report will no doubt prove to be a most valuable reference work. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Freshwater
This book is a helpful guide for people studying or inquisitive about the looming world water crisis. ... Read more

Product Description
For more than a decade, The State of the World's Children report from UNICEF has become the best-known and most widely used of all United Nations publications. Published in forty languages, it is distributed to media in all countries at the year's end, and has become both a record and a catalyst for the movement to promote the kind of development that benefits today's children--and tomorrow's world.

UNICEF's 1996 State of the World's Children report, marking the organization's fiftieth anniversary, examines the plight of children caught in the crossfire of armed conflicts or propelled into the savagery as combatants. It also reflects on the long-term toll taken on the young by wars fought most frequently in impoverished societies least able to rebuild shattered economies and lives. Fifty years ago, out the horror of the Second World War, came a new global commitment to peace. It found expression in the programs and projects of the United Nations and development agencies like UNICEF. This focus on peace continues and UNICEF argues in this report that it can and must be strengthened for children. To help achieve that objective, the report offers an agenda for peace for children that includes a call for a complete ban on land mines and support for a boycott of companies that manufacture them. It also urges governments to honor the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the powerful human rights instrument, now ratified by more than 175 countries, as crucial protection for children.A celebrated voice which highlights the pressing problems of children and offers solutions to them, The State of the World's Children report is an extremely important document for everyone concerned with children worldwide. ... Read more

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In a world convulsed by war and hatred, the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, begun in 1988, stands as a rare and inspiring example of what can be done when the world works together against a common enemy. Sebasti"o Salgado, known for his dedication to the plight of the world's dispossessed in Workers (1994) and Migrations (2000), traveled to five polio endemic countries--Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Pakistan, Somalia, and Sudan--to photograph the campaign to eradicate polio by 2005. He shares those photographs here. The book also includes a substantial essay by UNICEF writer Siddharth Dube, a comprehensive history of the disease presented in the form of an illustrated timeline; and information on how to help. THE END OF POLIO is an inspiring testament to the possibility for successful cooperation between nations and communities on levels ranging from local to global, as well as an important volume for those whose lives have been touched by polio. ... Read more