Two decades of UN leadership: papers of K. Annan and B. Ki-moon, 1997-2016

In 2022, Dr. Jean Krasno, lecturer at Columbia University and City College of New York (USA),  published the papers of former United Nations Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon in order to make this important collection available to students and scholars. She will give a conference at Sciences Po on her experience working on these valuable archives and on the significance of broadening access to them.

The presentation will focus on two online publications that cover the work of both UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan (1997 to 2006) and Ban Ki-moon (2007 to 2016).  The Kofi Annan papers were first published in book form, The Collected Papers of Kofi Annan, 2012, Lynne Rienner Publishers, and then selected declassified papers were placed online through JSTOR to be openly available to a wider audience.  The Selected Papers of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon: Providing Digital Access was then published on JSTOR in 2022, again to be widely available for students, scholars and diplomats.

Dr. Jean Krasno is the Project Director.  The project gathers in one collection the most important papers of these UN Secretaries-General for research and investigation by scholars, students, diplomats, and the general public and makes them easily available as a digital primary resource. The papers make an important contribution to the international community by enabling researchers and others to explore the inner workings of the United Nations and the policy making process of these UN leaders and their advisers. They add to and encourage in-depth study of the UN.  The collections include declassified internal memos, letters, UN noon briefings, key speeches, hand-written notes, selected reports to the General Assembly and Security Council, code cables and many photographs.  Websites were created for both sets and then linked to the full body of papers.  Dr. Krasno worked closely with both Secretaries-General to conduct interviews and to ensure that the most important papers would be included.

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Short biography: 

Jean Krasno is a tenured lecturer and faculty member of the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership, City College of New York; Krasno has also taught in the Departments of Political Science at Columbia and Yale and is currently a lecturer at Columbia University where she teaches seminars on international law.