Conversations at the United Nations : An Inside Look at the Permanent Missions, UN Administration, and Nongovernmental Organizations

No institution is better known, and perhaps more misunderstood than the United Nations. When the world was desperate to create a lasting peace after two devastating World Wars, the UN Charter was written in 1945 in San Francisco with much fanfare. Seven decades later, the UN has more than one hundred sub-organizations, executive offices in more than twenty-three countries, over 44,000 paid employees, and officially recognizes more than 2,000 NGOs (Nongovernmental Organizations) as partners.

Conversations at the United Nations provides an enjoyable way to get a richer look at this behemoth organization by introducing the reader to a number of the ambassadors of the Permanent Missions, UN Administrative Directors, the NGOs, and volunteer civil society organizations such as Rotary International, by breaking down this monolithic Member State organization into individual, comprehensible segments.

The information in this book is based on interviews, conversations, and presentations that the author chronicled from the monthly International Breakfast Meetings the Rotary Club of New York organized over a fourteen-year period at UN Headquarters Permanent Missions, and other venues in New York City.

In a readable and enjoyable chronicle, Conversations at the United Nations takes the reader on a journey to many of the branches of the UN, the diplomats, the NGOs (Nongovernmental Organizations) and Civil Society. It also introduces many of the men and women from these organizations that comprise today's United Nations global network. The ';conversations' provide an overview of the topics and political complexities facing the United Nations, and the reader will get a firsthand account of the personalities and backgrounds of those individuals as well as the organizations they represent.