The document summarizes key ideas and contributions of the United Nations over its history. It discusses nine UN ideas that have changed the world, including human rights, gender equality, development goals, and environmental sustainability. It notes both successes, such as establishing core human rights, and failures, such as a weak response to HIV/AIDS. The UN's ideas have influenced global governance through changing perceptions, setting agendas, and becoming embedded in institutions. Challenges for the future include strengthening global cooperation and addressing issues like inequality and climate change.

1. UN Ideas That Changed
the World
Sir Richard Jolly
UN SUMMER ACADEMY

2. UN Ideas -
four main points
1. Ideas are possibly the UN’s most important
contributions
2. The nine UN ideas that changed the World
3 Successes and Failures in putting them into action
4. Future challenges and conclusions for UN Staff

3. Lourdes Arizpe
“Someone once said that the United Nations is a
dream managed by bureaucrats. I would correct
that by saying that it has become a bureaucracy
managed by dreamers.
Certainly you have to be a dreamer to work in the
United Nations with conviction. It is only if you
have this sense of mission that you can withstand
the constant battering by governments who are
afraid that the United Nations will become a world
government…
So in the end, someone who works in the United
Nations has to be a magician of ideas, because
working for the United Nations is like working for
a government in which all the political parties are
in power at the same time.”

4. The Power of Ideas

5. Mrs. Ogata
Bernard Chidzero
Sir Hans
Singer
Elise Boulding
Samir Amin
Celso Furtado
Boutros
Boutros-Ghali
Javier Perez de
Cuellar
Leticia
Shahani
Just Faaland
Fernando
Henrique Cardoso
Juan Somavía
Dharam Ghai

6. The Power of People

7. www.UNHistory.org

8. The 9 UN Ideas That Changed the
World
Human Rights
1: Human Rights for All
2: Gender Equality and Women’s Rights
Economic Development
3: Development Goals
4: Fairer International Economic Relations
5: Strategies for Accelerating Development in Poorer
Countries
6: Priorities for Social Development
Holistic Development
7: Environmental Sustainability
8: Peace and Human Security
9: Human Development

9. Human Rights for All
 The boldest step of all
 UDHR was agreed as no more than a declaration,
but increasingly has been turned into law and is being implemented
 A core of seven major human rights conventions have now been ratified by
120-190 countries
 Many other conventions and instruments adopted and ratified
 The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights was created in 1993
 Rights-based approaches to development increasingly applied

10. Gender Equality and Women’s
Empowerment
 1946 – Gender at top of UN’s
statistical agenda
 1960s – UN women’s studies
started in sub-Saharan Africa
 1970 – Women in Development,
Ester Boserup’s classic
 1975-95 – Four world women’s
conferences mobilized
women on a global scale –
from Mexico to Beijing
 1976 – UNIFEM established
 1979 – CEDAW adopted
 2010 – UNWomen established
and USG appointed

11. Peace and Security
Evolving Ideas and Approaches
 1945 – Replacing conflict with
the rule of law
 1950s – Preventive diplomacy
 1950s-1990s – Disarmament
and development
 1948-2010 Peacekeeping =
124,000 deployed
today, 2,100 from
China
 1994 – Human security
 2001 – The Responsibility to
Protect

12. Human Development
A paradigm, not just a slogan, nor just
for human development indicators
The creation of the distinguished
Pakistan economist Mahbub ul Haq
and the Indian Nobel laureate
economist and philosopher Professor
Amartya Sen
HDRs produced annually and some 750
National Human Development Reports
Human Development brings together UN
values and most UN activities

13. The UN’s Economic Ideas –
pioneering and brilliiant but often neglected:
Nine Nobel Prize Winners in Economics
1969: Jan Tinbergen
1973: Wassily Leontief
1974: Gunnar Myrdal
1977: James Meade
1979: W. Arthur Lewis and
Theodore W. Schultz
1980: Lawrence R. Klein
1984: Richard Stone
1998: Amartya Sen
Lawrence R. Klein
Amartya Sen

14. The UN economic ideas have often differed from those of
the World Bank and the IMF – but the Bretton Woods
Institutions have received most donor support
Fairer International Economic Relations –
priorities for trade, aid and TNCs
National Development strategies –directed to
accelerated national development
Development Goals –mostly focused on human
advance, recently towards the MDGs
Social Development priorities–a key component of
development from the UN’s earliest years

15. UN goals
“a mixed record but more achievement than generally realized”
1950s Eradicating Malaria
1960-1980 UPE (Universal Primary Education)
1961-1970 (First) Development Decade
–accelerating economic growth
1966-1979 Smallpox Eradication –achieved in 11 years
1981-1990 Water and Sanitation Decade
1984-1990 “Child Survival & Development Revolution”
2000-2015 The Millennium Development Goals (the MDGs)

16. The Millennium Summit Agreed the MDGs
September 2000

17. Structural Adjustment and the Washington
Consensus missed their goals-with
disastrous effects
20-year changes in per capita income
1960-1980 1980-2000
Latin America + 80% + 9%
Sub-Saharan Africa + 36% - 15%
Source: Mark Weisbrot et al, The Emperor Has No Growth :Declining Growth in the Era of
Globalization (Washington DC, Centre for Economic and Policy Research) 2001

18. A Balance Sheet of the UN’s
Contributions
 The UN has led the way with many fundamental ideas,
more than is often realized – notably in statistics, setting
global goals, development thinking, environment,
supporting equitable economic relations, peace and
security, human rights and human development
 The UN has often been ahead of the World Bank and the
IMF – though these have received most donor support
and most finance
 Over the long run, the UN shows considerable impact
 Ideas are among the UN’s most important contributions

19. Negatives on the UN Balance Sheet
 Late reaction to the Washington Consensus
 Weak response to the special needs of the least
developed countries
 Too little done to introduce cultural aspects into
the development equation
 Tardy and weak reaction to HIV/AIDS
 Inadequate attention to inequalities of income
and wealth, nationally & internationally

20. UN Ideas gain global
influence in four ways
Changing the way issues are perceived
Redefining state and non-state interests and
goals, thereby setting agendas for action
Mobilizing coalitions to press for action
Becoming embedded in institutions, which
have responsibilities for oversight,
implementation and monitoring

21. The Three UNs: 1st UN
Source: UN Photo Archives
Governments

22. The Three UNs: 2nd UN
Source: UN Photo Archives
Staff members

23. The Three UNs: 3rd UN
Source: UN Photo Archives
Experts, members of commissions, and
NGOs closely associated with the UN

24. Global challenges for the UN’s
future
1 Strengthen global governance in a multi-polar
world with strengthened regionalism
2 Tackle climate change and sustainability
3 Diminish national and global inequalities
4 Pursue sustainable holistic development
5 Build international values of humanity and
solidarity and bridge divides of culture and
identities

25. Priorities for recovering from the crisis
(drawn from the Stiglitz Report to the UN GA, 2009)
Immediate
1 National and regional actions to tackle the three scourges
= Unemployment, inequalities & environmental sustainability
2 Global and regional coordination of actions
3 Make finance and the banks the servant not the master
Over the medium and longer run
1 Reform governance in the IMF and World Bank, with double majority voting
2 Restore and strengthen the position of the UN in economic governance
 Embark on more fundamental changes
3 A global reserve system
4 Mechanisms to diminish causes of global instability
5 Legal and economic modalities for Sovereign Debt default and restructuring
6 An international Court for Debt Restructuring

26. Conclusions for UN Staff
 Never underestimate the power of UN ideas
 Apply and support UN ideas at country level
• National Human Development Reports
• Reports on Human Security
• Catalytic support for implementation
• Monitoring nationally and regionally
• Support analysis of national interests in global actions
 Collaborate around common goals and ideas
 Goals and ideas are a constructive alternative to bureaucracy
 Partner with the Bank and the Fund but recognize the power
of UN ideas

27. Sergio Vieira de Mello
“Unless we aim for the
seemingly unattainable, we
risk settling for mediocrity.”

28. Kofi Annan
“Applaud us when we prevail.
Correct us when we fail. But
above all, do not let this
indispensable, irreplaceable
institution wither, languish or
perish…”

29. Sources on UN history
 UN Websites – many
 UNIHP = www.unhistory.org
 Oral histories =CD ROM of UNIHP
interviews
 UK careers records and related records =
Bodleian Library, Oxford

31. UNIHP Book Series
 Ahead of the Curve? UN Ideas and Global Challenges
(2001; 2nd edition 2003; French, German, Arabic editions
published 2003)
 Unity and Diversity in Development Ideas: Perspectives
from the UN Regional Commissions (2004)
 Quantifying the World: UN Contributions to Statistics (2004)
 UN Contributions to Development Thinking and Practice
(2004)
 The UN and Global Political Economy: Trade, Finance, and
Development (2004)
 UN Voices: The Struggle for Development and Social Justice
(2005)
 Women, Development, and the UN: A Sixty-Year Quest for
Equality and Justice (2005)
 The Power of UN Ideas: Lessons from the First 60 Years
(2005)
 Human Security and the UN: A Critical History (2006)

32. UNIHP Book Series
 The Oxford Handbook on the United Nations (2007)
 Human Rights at the UN: The Political History of Universal
Justice (2008)
 Preventive Diplomacy at the UN (2008)
 The UN and Transnational Corporations: from Code of
Conduct to Global Compact (2008)
 The UN and Development: From Aid to Cooperation (2009)
 UN Ideas That Changed the World (2009)
 The UN and Global Governance: An Unfinished Journey
(forthcoming 2010)
 Development Without Destruction: The UN and the Global
Resource Management (forthcoming 2010)

34. Fifteen UN Organizations and
Individuals Have Received the
Nobel Peace Prize
 1949: John Boyd Orr
 1950: Ralph Bunche
 1954 and 1981: Office of The UN High
Commissioner for Refugees
 1957: Lester Pearson
 1961: Dag Hammarskjöld
 1965: UNICEF –The UN Children’s Fund
 1968: René Cassin
 1969: The International Labour Organization
 1982: Alva Myrdal and Alfonzo Garcia Robles
 1988: UN Peacekeeping Forces
 2001: Kofi Annan and the UN
 2005: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
and its Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei
 2007: The UN Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (jointly with Al Gore)
 2008: Martti Ahtisaari
Kofi Annan
Martti Ahtisaari