2001 Issues
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	Issue 1, 2001: Our Urban Future The United Nations Chronicle has been published in varying formats and frequencies since the start of the Organization. While the change to its current title inadvertently disconcerted librarians and indexers alike, we like to think the change goes beyond the name to what the journal (magazine? quarterly? periodical?) is all about. As it happened, the change occurred at the very time that the instantaneous delivery of news and information in this Internet era presented a challenge to a print publication which covered events over a 90-day span. Until news became so immediate, and so readily dated, the UN Chronicle, The UN Monthly Chronicle, The UN Weekly Review, in its various formats, did precisely what its masthead implied - chronicled or reviewed activities and events. Now, the journal allows events to be the harbour in which to anchor articles, think pieces, features or interviews that encourage reflection rather than offer recitation. At times, we have a foreknowledge of events; this issue, for instance, looks forward to three major conferences taking place in June and July, not in terms of their “agenda” alone but from perspectives - sometimes provocative but always informed - that throw open the wider wealth of possibilities with which their deliberations can be invested. At other times, we look back, on the “Millennium World Peace Summit” and UN participation in Expo 2000, and, in doing so, we do not simply describe what happened, we also share some of the personal energy that enhanced those experiences and some of the ideas, often unexpected, that they yielded.
	Issue 2, 2001: Death, and Health, in Africa If there was one overarching message from the General Assembly’s special session on HIV/AIDS, it was that an epidemic of global and non-discriminatory proportion requires a response of similar nature. Our cover story brings home that point as well, through the aching vividness of personal experience. Even as we celebrate the end of the Ebola outbreak in Uganda, and applaud the enormous medical, scientific, administrative and political will which the World Health Organization helped channel, we recognize, as Dan Bausch does, that there are lessons beyond the transience of that virus, which relate to the health and well-being of an entire continent of peoples.
	Issue 3, 2001: One is the only choice that's left “NUMBER”, as crossword puzzlers have long known, has two distinct meanings; one, a mathematical figure, the other, an anaesthetic. When we began to put together this issue, timed to appear just before the second global “Food Summit”, our idea was to go beyond the desensitization of figures to individual lives inadequately lived, and to assess how the United Nations has been able to help make those lives more secure, more productive, more worthy of the simple miracle of being. Then September 11 happened. We were again overwhelmed by numbers. First, rooted in fear, then tempered by hope, and finally defined in grief. Thousands are now known to have died within a small circumference of land, thousands of others, in countries across our planet, have been left bereaved. In the city of accomodation and assimilation that is host to the United Nations, individuals among the thousands claimed a name, as flyers with faces untouched by premonition freckled its shorn skyline and the flame of single candles warmed its autumn air. There were other names too, of youth and life lost in a moment’s heroism, and the numbers grew. We had discovered, in planning this “food” issue, that the time for “prevention” had passed; all that was left was chance, shortening each day, for correction.
	Issue 4, 2001: After the Prize The overwhelming inclusive character of the United Nations, reflected in the Nobel Peace Committee’s deliberate choice of it as a joint awardee, comprehends Member States and the Organization’s principal organs, including the General Assembly, Security Council, Trusteeship Council, Economic and Social Council, the International Court of Justice and the international civil service that constitutes the Secretariat. We offer perspectives from each of these - three Member States who were, until ten years ago, part of a larger political entity known as the Soviet Union; the General Assembly debate; an analysis of the Security Council’s “humanitarian action” role; a perspective on trusteeship in the Organization’s notable success in contributing to democratic nationhood in East Timor and its continued concerns about dependent territories and the responsibilities of administering Powers, a look ahead to the Johannesburg Summit on sustainable development; our “PeaceWatch” section that includes regular coverage of international legal matters within the United Nations context; and an appreciation of one Nobel Laureate UN Secretary-General by a successor, who was himself a few weeks later named for that award.

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