Organization Releases ‘Yearbook of the United Nations’, Covering Global Activities in 2010

The United Nations today released the sixty-fourth volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations, covering the Organization’s global activities in 2010.

“With this volume on the work of the United Nations in 2010, the Yearbook collection further chronicles the often difficult, but always valuable, global campaign for a better future,” Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said of this issue.

With its comprehensive coverage of political and security matters, human rights issues, economic and social questions, legal concerns, and institutional, administrative and budgetary proceedings, the Yearbook of the United Nations stands as the authoritative reference work on the activities of the Organization.

Fully indexed, the 33-chapter, 1,581-page 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 most recent volume recounts how, in 2010, the Organization took up challenges and opportunities worldwide in maintaining international peace and security, fostering economic and social development, providing humanitarian assistance, promoting and protecting human rights, and advancing international law.

The Art Deco-inspired cover, designed by the award-winning United Nations Graphic Design Unit, celebrates the establishment of the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN-Women).  In preparing the book, the Yearbook editorial team regularly researches and digests some 10,000 United Nations official documents pertaining to all aspects of the work of the Organization.

The 2010 Yearbook highlights the renewed commitment by world leaders to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by 2015, the establishment of UN-Women and the Organization’s massive humanitarian response to the devastating earthquake that struck Haiti on 12 January, an event that claimed the lives of more than 220,000 people, including 102 United Nations personnel.

The Yearbook has been published since 1946–47.  All volumes of the Yearbook collection can be accessed in full online on the Yearbook website at http://unyearbook.un.org. 

The Yearbook Express, also available on the website, features chapter introductions to selected Yearbooks in all six United Nations official languages.  The Twitter account @UNYearbook provides an historical perspective on current United Nations activities and concerns.

The September 2014 issue of Foreign Service Journal, the monthly of the American Foreign Service Association, singled out the website as "site of the month”, also illustrating the site’s main features.  In a new study, Paul Novosad and Eric Werker of Harvard Business School consulted all Yearbooks through 2008 to look at the nationalities of senior staff of the Organization; they drew surprising conclusions about the influence of smaller countries compared with world Powers.

The Yearbook of the United Nations 2010, volume 64, xvi + 1,581pp., Sales No. E.12.I.1 H, ISBN: 978-92-1-101276-7, eISBN: 978-92-1-056089-4, can be obtained through bookstores worldwide, and ordered from United Nations Publications, PO Box 960, Herndon, Virginia 20172, United States of America, or from https://unp.un.org.