United Nations Publishes Final Edition of United Nations Yearbook
The United Nations has published the sixty-ninth and final volume of the Yearbook of the United Nations, representing the most authoritative reference work on the activities and concerns of the Organization in 2015.
Like all volumes beginning with the first (1946–47) edition, the 2015 Yearbook can be accessed freely and in full on the Yearbook website: www.un.org/en/yearbook.
“This volume”, observes United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in his Foreword, “recounts the pivotal year in which the global community reached agreement on a number of crucial road maps for the future — including the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change. These significant achievements for multilateralism and global partnership provide a blueprint for advancing development, human rights and peace and security.”
The 2015 edition of the Yearbook further highlights efforts to ease the severe humanitarian and political crisis in Syria, which entered its fifth year; support recovery in Afghanistan; and attain a diplomatic resolution to the conflicts in Yemen and in the eastern part of Ukraine. The volume also shows how the United Nations supported the more than 1 million refugees reaching the shores of Europe in flight from conflict and violence, along with its success in helping victims of the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda attain legal recourse to justice.
Placing all United Nations General Assembly, Economic and Social Council, and Security Council resolutions and decisions and/or presidential statements in a unique narrative context, the 33 chapters of the Yearbook provide policymakers, diplomats, researchers, academics, journalists and other readers with comprehensive and in-depth coverage of the United Nations role in the main global political, economic, social and legal developments of each year.
With the release of this latest and last edition, the Yearbook collection now spans the first 70 years of the activities and achievements of the Organization — from its inception in post-war 1945 to the 2015 adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals — and so provides an enduring resource for those seeking a deeper look at how global issues have been addressed within and across the United Nations system.
“As the world moves ahead,” Secretary-General Guterres concludes, “we look forward to finding new, innovative and timely twenty-first century tools and products to continue sharing the story of the United Nations for posterity.”