Secretary-General 'Blue Books Series' showcases legacy of United Nations: praise for series grows as sales top 11,000.

With the publication in early 1996 of The United Nations and the Iraq-Kuwait Conflict, 1990-1996 and The United Nations and Somalia, 1990-1996, the Department of Public Information (DPI) has published, in little over a year, nine "Blue Book" titles in English (for a total of 19 when French and other official UN languages are included). Comprehensive and authoritative, the series has quickly established itself as a major component in the Department's vital work of promoting deeper understanding and support for the goals and activities of the UN. Equally significant, it is an important international publishing entreprise which any Government or publishing house would be proud of. Reflecting this recognition, more than 11,000 copies have already been sold, at a cost of between $30 and $50 each.

The primary audience for these books is the research and academic community, whose work has a central bearing on long-term thinking and policy. UN links with this important constituency have grown stronger under the tenure of Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who had a distinguished career as an author and professor of law before joining the diplomatic world and who has given a scholarly hue to his period in office with his idea for, and authorship of, the Blue Books series.

A measure of the impact the series has had can be gauged from the comments of the internationally renowned law professor Philip Alston, who is Director of the Centre for International Public Law at the European University Institute in Florence: "The documents have been skilfully selected and edited and the introduction provides an excellent overview of the evolution of United Nations policy. In the absence of these volumes, it would be very difficult for the vast majority of researchers to obtain ready access to the documents collected in this series."

As Assistant Secretary-General for Public Information Samir Sanbar says: "It is not at all surprising that the Secretary-General's work on behalf of the international community should also include rigorous scholarship about the United Nations. The critical response to the series, and its impressive sales, indicates that this initiative is widely appreciated." Mr. Sanbar emphasized that although the books are aimed at specialists, they contain insights into international diplomacy and relations among nations that a wider, more general readership will also find interesting.

Each book in the series focuses on a major international concern in which the UN has played a leading role. And each brings together for the first time in a single volume a definitive compilation of primary historical resources: the key relevant UN documentation, including some previously unpublished correspondence of UN Secretaries-General, as well as other valuable texts. Ironically, even though the UN has been the pivotal player in many of the great issues of our time, the vital legacy of the Organization was never recorded in this manner and there has never been such a central source of information to which scholars and others could turn. Those studying a particular UN effort needed to undertake a cumbersome and time-consuming effort to identify, locate and obtain the relevant materials.

Another feature of each book is an extensive, highly readable introduction by Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali, which chronicles the involvement of the UN and in which he offers his conclusions on the subject matter under discussion. The books, which average about 500 pages, also include a chronology of events and indexes of both the documents and the Secretary-General's introduction.

But again, the heart of these volumes is the documentation. The book on the struggle against apartheid, for example, contains the Freedom Charter of the African National Congress, Nelson Mandela's statement at his 1964 trial in Pretoria, and all the resolutions of the Security Council and the General Assembly concerning the international campaign for a democratic, non-racial South Africa. The volume on the successful peace-keeping and peace-building operation in El Salvador includes fascinating exchanges of letters between the Secretary-General, the President of El Salvador and members of the opposition Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional, as well as the entire text of the historic report of the Commission on the Truth. And the book on the advancement of women contains the full text of the landmark 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, other international conventions and declarations, action plans such as the 1985 Nairobi Forward-looking Strategies, and statistics on the status of women worldwide. A similar wealth of materials fills all the other books in the series, which cover human rights, nuclear non-proliferation and peace-keeping operations in Cambodia, Mozambique and Somalia.

Other reviewers have included Law Books in Review (U.S.A.), which wrote that "no scholar, student, foreign policy practitioner and regional historian should ignore this literature". And Ms. Edy Kaufman, Director of the Centre for International Development and Conflict Management (U.S.A.), stated that the series "offers an outstanding amount of information". Another indication of the Blue Books' appeal and strength is that a number of prominent publishers have expressed interest in issuing the series. In the end, it was decided that the UN itself should remain the publisher.

On 14 February, the Secretary-General met with several members of DPI's Blue Books team. Assistant Secretary-General Sanbar noted that a remarkable inter-departmental and high-level coordination lay at the heart of the Secretariat's ability to produce so many comprehensive studies in such rapid fashion. The relevant substantive offices have offered crucial guidance on complex issues, while translators, text processors and others in the Office of Conference and Support Services have met the formidable challenge of readying the documents selected for publication. Most of the books have been printed internally by the Reproduction Section, at a fraction of the private-sector cost of producing similarly high-quality volumes. Worldwide distribution and sales have been facilitated by the active involvement of UN Information Centres, which, in addition to arranging for translations into non-official UN languages and targeting promotional efforts at leading experts at the national level, have used the books as "living resources" for important regional and national conferences on human rights and the various other subject areas covered by the series.

Future plans for the series include exploring with outside publishers the potential for CD-ROM, multimedia and other computer-based spin-offs, "popular" versions of the books containing only the introduction, and other ways to extend the series' worldwide reach and revenue-generating capacity.

The United Nations Blue Books Series:

The United Nations and Apartheid, 1948-1994 (available in Arabic, English and French)

The United Nations and Cambodia, 1991-1995 (C,E,F)

The United Nations and Nuclear Non-Proliferation (E,F)

The United Nations and El Salvador, 1990-1995 (E,S)

The United Nations and Mozambique, 1992-1995 (E,F)

The United Nations and the Advancement of Women, 1945-1995 (C,E)

The United Nations and Human Rights, 1945-1995 (E,F,S)

The United Nations and Somalia, 1992-1996 (E)

The United Nations and the Iraq-Kuwait Conflict, 1990-1996 (E)

Forthcoming titles:

The United Nations and Electoral Assistance

The United Nations and Eritrea

The United Nations and Haiti

The United Nations and Rwanda

The United Nations and the International Tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia

The United Nations and the former Yugoslavia

For information, contact:

United Nations Publications, Room DC2-0853, United Nations, New York 10017

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United Nations Publications, Sales Office and Bookshop, CH-1211 Geneva 10, Switzerland

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