With its comprehensive coverage of political and security matters, human rights issues, economic and social questions, legal issues, and administrative and budgetary matters, the Yearbook of the United Nations stands as the authoritative reference work on the annual activities and concerns of the Organization. Fully indexed, the 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 sixty-eighth volume presents the work of the United Nations in dealing with recurring conflicts with severe humanitarian consequences including in the Syrian Arab Republic, where more than 12 million people were in need of basic food, clothing and shelter. The volume also highlights the Organization's rapid response to an escalatory global health emergency, the Ebola virus disease outbreak across West Africa. It documents the Organization's coordination of policy discussions to finalize a global sustainable development agenda, with the security of future generations as the core concern; and its efforts to rebuild societies emerging from conflict while keeping the fragile peace in other places. It further details the entry into force of the landmark Arms Trade Treaty, the missile downing of a passenger airliner in the midst of a geopolitical crisis in eastern Ukraine, and securing international human rights and humanitarian law and prosecuting abusers.
