Upside down
Start with the prevailing disposition of power, trim your principles to fit, and you end up with an organization stood on its head. David Ransom spells out the consequences.

The United Nations system
A route map around the labyrinth.

Saving humanity from hell
It never was the UN’s job to make heaven on earth. Shashi Tharoor defends the organization against misguided missiles.

In memory of Srebrenica
Ten years after the massacre, when the UN stood by, Fatima Hassan remembers.

The sky’s no limit
Adam Ma’anit sinks into the murky world of carbon trading.

The UN – The Facts

Grimm rewards
Ian Williams reckons that reform might work in mysterious ways.

Missing – the Millennium Development Goals

Bluewash
Kenny Bruno follows the road from environmental ‘greenwash’ to the UN’s Global Compact with corporate power.

Cradle to grave
The UN does not have a clean slate in Iraq. Felicity Arbuthnot recalls an embargo that even banned funeral shrouds.

Humane development
It’s possible to make space for a radical project even inside the belly of the beast. Mark Engler tells the story of the Human Development Report.

A brief history of the UN

Cosmopolis
David Ransom makes a plea for common humanity.

FROM THIS MONTH'S EDITOR

This edition of the NI was completed just two days before disaster overwhelmed so many people living on the rim of the Indian Ocean. There can be few people anywhere in the world who have not also been struck by the shockwaves of a ‘natural’ and seemingly meaningless tragedy.

All the same, the instant of the tsunami revealed a great deal. Our national governments were, for the most part, exposed as instinctively myopic, parsimonious and tardy. Common humanity was quicker to respond, more naturally cosmopolitan, generous and active. The United Nations exists to embody the latter – but is subservient to the former. If a tsunami can at least shock us into relocating the UN nearer to the world’s people, its effect will not have been entirely destructive. And if the remaining content of this magazine about the UN – which of necessity we have left largely unaltered – contributes to such a move then it will have served a constructive purpose.

Reasons to celebrate the New Year are hard to find, so the launch of a brilliant new magazine is all the more welcome. Bulb has been created by and for a young generation that is, among other things, tired of the moribund corporate media, dismayed by the ‘youth market’ and enraged by the war in Iraq. It illuminates what is, after all, their future. We recommend it wholeheartedly to all our readers, young and old alike. You can make contact, offer support or subscribe – for the time being only in Britain, but maybe elsewhere in the world eventually – via their pilot website: www.bulbmag.com

David Ransom
for the New Internationalist
Co-operative
davidr@newint.org

Letters
Government subsidies to arms traders; don't mock creationism; men working for gender equity; markets are much older than capitalism.
PLUS: Letter from Lebanon Tribute to a survivor of the Armenian genocide, by Reem Haddad.

Southern Exposure
Please go in! A basketball drama from Zimbabwe photographed by Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi.

View from the South
Why did scrap metal in a Delhi junkyard start exploding, killing some workers? Urvashi Butalia investigates the mystery and finds the world's wars are affecting lives far removed from the battleground.

Currents
Indigenous Botswanans' case goes global; epidemic of attacks on Iraqi women; Uruguay's leftist landslide.
PLUS: Big Bad World Dreaming of Dubya, by Polyp.
PLUS: WordPower – the language of international organizations.
PLUS: Speechmarks and Seriously

Front cover illustration: Bev Knowlden
Magazine Design: ALAN HUGHES
On-line mag maintained by: Simon Loffler
All monetary values are expressed in US dollars unless otherwise noted.

© Copyright 2005 New Internationalist Publications Ltd. All rights reserved.