Abiodun Williams – författare

Kofi Annan was the most significant and influential Secretary-General of the United Nations. Kofi Annan and Global Leadership at the United Nations is a study of how Annan conceived his role as Secretary-General and exercised global leadership at a turbulent period in world affairs.Williams discusses the challenges he faced during his tenure from 1997 to 2006 and how he dealt with them. The volume sheds light on the importance of leadership for the performance of a global institution, and examines such issues as Conflict Prevention, Peacekeeping, Peacebuilding, the Millennium Development Goals, HIV/AIDS, the Responsibility to Protect, Human Rights, Climate Change, and Migration. It provides insight into how Annan led the UN during several international crises, including the terrorist attacks of 9/11, conflicts in Kosovo and East Timor, and the war in Iraq. It illustrates how he built partnerships with non-state actors, including nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, universities, think tanks, and Nobel laureates in order to advance the UN's mission without relying exclusively on state power and inter-state cooperation.Kofi Annan and Global Leadership at the United Nations charts Annan's ambitious efforts to reform and adapt the UN to the needs of the twenty-first century. It is a pathbreaking and authoritative volume and a union of scrupulous scholarship and insider knowledge of the UN.

The United Nations Secretary-General and the United Nations Security Council spend significant amounts of time on their relationship with each other. They rely on each other for such important activities as peacekeeping, international mediation, and the formulation and application of normative standards in defense of international peace and security - in other words the executive aspects of the UN's work. The UN Secretary-General and the Security Council fills an important lacuna in the scholarship on the UN system. Although there exists today an impressive body of literature on the development and significance of the Secretariat and the Security Council as separate organs, an important gap remains in our understanding of the interactions between them. Bringing together some of the most prominent authorities on the subject, this volume is the first book-length treatment of this topic. It studies the UN from an innovative angle, creating new insights on the (autonomous) policy-making of international organizations, and adds to our understanding of the dynamics of intra-organizational relationships. Within the book, the contributors examine how each Secretary-General interacted with the Security Council, touching upon such issues as the role of personality, the formal and informal infrastructure of the relationship, the selection and appointment processes, as well as the Secretary-General's threefold role as a crisis manager, administrative manager, and manager of ideas.

International negotiations increasingly involve a myriad of state and nonstate actors who approach major issues from a variety of standpoints and work to determine outcomes acceptable to all. Great powers, military allies, business and industry, LDCs, international organizations, and even domestic politics enter into negotiations on complex issues—ranging from defense and national security to environmental protection and Third World development—that now dominate the global agenda. Abiodun Williams has assembled a collection of case studies that illustrate the variety and dynamism of this complex decisionmaking process. Cases including conflict resolution in Indochina and mining in Antarctica show students the role of contending national objectives, necessary trade-offs, and efforts at coalition building, as well as the influence of personality and persuasion on the outcomes of major negotiations. A case exploring the investment activities of transnational corporations and their impact on developing countries is organized as a simulation exercise that offers students rare insight into negotiations under UN auspices and the impact of regional bloc politics on multilateral diplomacy.