United Nations Economic Commision for Africa (UNECA) institutional repository

The United Nations Economic Commision for Africa (UNECA) has launched an institutional repository.



In its 50 years of existence, UNECA has created and holds a vast quantity of information and knowledge in a variety of formats, including printed and electronic. These represent the organisation's corporate memory, providing historical evidence of its actions and decisions. The information resources include published materials such as flagship publications, journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports, mission reports, annual reports, working papers, speeches and other grey literature, all which outline important research or decisions that have been made on the economic and social developmental aspects in Africa.


The Institutional Repository of the Economic Commission for Africa offers unique knowledge and information not available elsewhere pertaining to regional programmes, decisions and resolutions promoting social and economic development in Africa. The repository includes key documents relating to the African Governance report, the African Women's Report, the Economic report on Africa, and Millennium Development Goals in Africa.


This material has been grouped into the following "communities" (with number of items as of July 2011 in square brackets):


•Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing [1537]
•Economic Development and Development Finance [8287]
•Gender issues and Equity [1153]
•Governance and Public Administration [2506]
•Industry [1539]
•International Trade [1524]
•Library, Information Communication Technology (ICT), Science and Technology [1770]
•Natural Resources and Environment [1934]
•Organizational Questions [1715]
•Political and Legal Questions [507]
•Social Development [6133]
•Sub-Regional Offices [57]
•Transport and Communications [1233]

Conference: Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the End of Empire

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London;

The Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala;

The United Nations Association of the UK, Westminster Branch London

will hold a one-day conference on

Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the End of Empire

at the University of London Senate House on Friday 2 September 2011,
to mark the 50th anniversary of UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld’s death.
[Convenors: Dr Mandy Banton and Dr Susan Williams]

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Programme

From 9.30 Tea/Coffee and Registration

9.45 Welcome and introduction

Professor Philip Murphy, Director of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies,
Dr Henning Melber, Director of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation
David Wardrop, Chairman, United Nations Association, Westminster Branch

10.00 Session I: Global Power Shifts (Chair: Dr Sarah Stockwell, Senior Lecturer in Imperial and Commonwealth History, King's College London)

Professor David Anderson, Professor of African Politics and Fellow of St Cross College, Oxford, ‘The Cold War in Africa’
Professor Wm. Roger Louis, CBE, Kerr Professor of English History and Culture and Director of British Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, ‘Hammarskjöld, the United Nations, and the Middle East’
Dr Benjamin Zachariah, Reader in South Asian History, University of Sheffield, ‘The place of the United Nations in Indian foreign policy thinking’

11.30 Coffee

11.40 Session II: End of European Empires (Chair: David Wardrop, Chairman, UNA Westminster Branch

Dr Jean-Pierre Bat, University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Centre d’étude des mondes africains (CEMAf), ‘De Gaulle, Algeria and Françafrique’
Dr Asahiko Hanzawa, Faculty of International Studies, Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, ‘An invisible surrender: the United Nations and the end of the British empire’
Ludo De Witte, Brussels, author of De Moord op Lumumba, 1999 [published in English as The Assassination of Lumumba, 2001], ‘Belgium, the Congo, and the assassination of Patrice Lumumba’

1.10 Sandwich lunch

2.00 Session III: Sources (Chair: Dr Marion Wallace, African Curator, British Library)

Dr Edward Hampshire, Principal Records Specialist, Diplomatic and Colonial, The National Archives of the UK, ‘The British official record’
Declan Power, security and defence journalist, Dublin, ‘The use of oral history to uncover the voices of Irish peacekeepers in the Congo’
Hans Kristian Simensen, Gothenburg, Secretary to the Scandinavian Committee of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, ‘Ndola, 18 September: from witness statements to the official reports; more questions’

3.30 Tea

3.45 Session IV: The Legacy of Dag Hammarskjöld (Chair: Professor Philip Murphy, Institute of Commonwealth Studies)

Professor Manuel Fröhlich, Professor of Political Science, Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena, ‘The Hammarskjöld Tradition and Global Leadership’
Baron [Douglas] Hurd of Westwell, CH, CBE, PC, diplomat, historian and former British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, ‘The legacy of Dag Hammarskjöld’
Dr Henning Melber, Executive Director, Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation, Uppsala, ‘Dag Hammarskjöld, the United Nations and Africa’

5.15 Reception

Anniversary of signing of UN Charter

The 26th of June was the 65th anniversary of the signing of the UN Charter. A small selection of photographs of the signing and anniversaries, etc are available on this Flickr site.

The Commonwealth Studies Library  has a large collection of publications from the United Nations and the various agencies that are part of the United Nations. These include material relationg to issues such as apartheid, human rights, development, trade, population, land reform, economics and conflict. The matyerial can be searched for on the catalogue by using the agency name as an author search.

United Nations report on Sri Lanka

The recent Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka has been made public and released on the UN website.

The panel was set up to advise Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on accountability issues relating to the final stages of the conflict, which ended in May 2009 when Government forces declared victory over the rebel Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). The panel found credible allegations of serious violations committed by the Government, including killing of civilians through widespread shelling and the denial of humanitarian assistance and credible allegations regarding the LTTE concerning numerous serious violations, including using civilians as a human buffer and killing civilians attempting to flee LTTE control.

The Sri Lanka conflict was fought over three decades and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies contains a wide range of material on the conflict and peacebuilding in Sri Lanka. Collections include primary material published by both the Sri Lanka Government and LTTE, as well as publications on topics including the conflict, peacebuilding, resettlement, development, displacement, ethnicity and human rights.

Recently acquired books also include works on recovery from the tsunami of 2004.