This book represents the first comprehensive attempt to examine the role of the United Nations in Africa over the last six decades. The contributions are from eminent pan-African scholars and policy intellectuals, most of whom have had practical first-hand experience with the world body. They examine 'global apartheid' - the inequitable power relations between the rich North and poor South - in three important areas: the politics within the UN's principal organs; peacekeeping and human rights; and, socio-economic development, centred on the efforts of sixteen UN specialised agencies, programmes and funds. This is a unique volume on the role of the world's most important multilateral body on its most impoverished continent.