Author Description

"Without the United Nations, the task of managing the world's mounting and increasingly complex crises would be well nigh impossible", this highly qualified author writes; but exactly for that reason, the UN, like any powerful body, has to be exposed to constructive criticism. Balogun takes the UN to task for lack of accountability, for faulty recruitment practices against integrity and competence, for undermining morale and breeding full scale conflict in the work place. He further highlights the UN bureaucrats' extraordinary ability to hide the information needed. While seeing the UN as indispensable, his belief in self-reliance as the key to each nation's survival and development makes him warn against too much outsourcing to the UN as it is at present. A book to be taken very seriously by all parties concerned, in our common search for ever better world governance. -- Johan Galtung, Transcend (Peace & Development Network), Oslo, Norway.