With all the media attention focused on the political and security actions of the United Nations, "people don't realize that 80 percent of the U.N.'s work is on the economic and social side," said Sir Richard Jolly, former assistant secretary general of the U.N. Yet almost all the books on the history of the U.N. are about its political activities, he said.

And that is why Jolly co-created the U.N. Intellectual History Project in 1999 with two colleagues, he said, speaking in the Plant Science Building April 1. The project is a comprehensive attempt to compile the intellectual history of the U.N.'s contributions to setting past, present or future development agendas. "We decided early on that we should focus on ideas, the intellectual side, not on the institutional history," he said.

Jolly, a senior research fellow at the CUNY Graduate Center, honorary professor at the University of Sussex and special adviser to the administrator of the U.N. Development Programme, has authored or contributed to 20 books and more than 100 articles. His lecture was part of the Spring 2010 Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) Colloquium Series.

After listing nine U.N. ideas that changed the world -- such as human rights for all, gender equality and environmental sustainability -- Jolly talked about human rights, gender equality and peace and security as well as the U.N.'s economic ideas. "People matter. Ideas matter," he said, describing the philosophy behind the U.N. Intellectual History Project, comprised of 17 volumes; three have already won prizes.

"How actually have ideas gained practical influence?" Jolly asked. By acting as a framework, "redefining state and non-state interests and goals, mobilizing coalitions," often NGOs, and by embedding ideas in institutions, he said.

As more international initiatives have been adopted to support various human rights, Jolly noted that the voluntary nature of these pacts is an issue: "In the U.N., human rights are still either declarations or covenants with so little international force behind them," he said

The U.N.'s idea of human security, he said, is that "people should be made the center of security issues, not protection of a country's borders through military means." Poor health services and unemployment are bigger threats to day-to-day security than nuclear weapons, he said.

Andrei Parvan, a CIPA graduate student who has worked for the U.N., said that the purpose of CIPA's Colloquium Series is "to keep it general enough that it can be of interest to all the different CIPA students." Commenting on Jolly's view of the U.N.'s influence, he said, "people who work in the U.N. are very open about what the shortcomings in the organization are."

Jolly concluded his lecture by reminding the audience of the words of former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan: "Applaud us when we prevail, correct us when we fail; but, above all, do not let this indispensable, irreplaceable institution wither, languish or perish."

Joseph Mansky '12 is a writer intern for the Cornell Chronicle.