47 Books Like Assisting International Justice

Funding of international organizations is one of the most obscure yet most consequential aspects of their work. Erin R. Graham convincingly demonstrates that the states that created the UN did not foresee the impending decolonization and the loss of the Western majority in the UN General Assembly, the UN body responsible for adopting the organization’s budget. Major donors, unable to maintain control over the regular budget, switched to providing voluntary funding—money that states can choose to give to the UN on their own terms, specifying projects and locations for their use.

The switch did not come about through an overhaul of the UN’s formal rules, but rather as a result of seemingly small, situation-specific decisions. Over time, they have led to the current state of affairs when 75 percent of UN development financing comes from voluntary contributions, undermining the spirit of multilateralism central to the UN.

The book theorizes international diplomats’ social capital as a reflection of their country’s positions in international hierarchies and, to a lesser extent, their individual experience and skill. It focuses, among other examples, on the debates on the reform of the UN Security Council that take place in the UN General Assembly. 

Pouliot offers a compelling account of the privileges that the permanent members of the UN Security Council enjoy that extend beyond veto powers, such as the mastery of the Council procedures that come with a permanent seat. The book suggests that besides institutional privileges, countries can also accumulate capital at the UN by providing voluntary funding or contributing peacekeepers.

The UN’s failure to prevent or stop the 1994 genocide in Rwanda is one of the darkest episodes in the organization’s history. Salton locates some of the responsibility for this failure in the inter-departmental rivalries within the UN Secretariat, in particular, between the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and the Department of Political Affairs. 

Based on the memoirs of Marrack Goulding, a Briton who served as the first head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations when it was created in 1992, the book sheds light on member states’ interference in the UN’s work. It also explores tensions between UN headquarters in New York and the leadership of the UN peacekeeping operation in Rwanda, as well as between the diplomatic and military leadership in the operation itself. Imprecise responsibilities, unclear lines of command, competing priorities, and personal jealousies contributed to the 1994 tragedy. 

The UN is more than just the General Assembly, the Security Council, and the Secretariat with its mediation and peacekeeping missions. The broader “UN Family of Organizations” includes agencies like the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), international financial institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and programs like the World Food Programme (WFP). 

Hall’s book focuses on three entities that are part of the UN system: the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Her book analyses whether, when, and how international bureaucrats decide to expand their organizations’ work into new areas. As a result, organisations initially focused on refugee protection (UNHCR), development (UNDP), and migration management (IOM) have ended up addressing the issue of climate change.

Lieutenant General Roméo Dallaire is the highest-ranking military officer who has come out and publicly talked about his psychiatric struggles with flashbacks, depression, and suicidal thoughts. This is his story as the commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda in 1993-94. Woven into his narrative is an account of the onset of traumatic stress and of his reactions to what psychiatry refers to as PTSD. This is a brutally honest book by a high-ranking military officer about the unspeakable inhumanity of civil war and the terrible vulnerability of international peacemakers. It is a story of one of the walking wounded who survived the genocide as a moral witness.  

This book made me stop and think—not about theory but institutional machinery. It captures the strange truth that international organisations often fail not because they don't care but because they are built in ways that make failure inevitable.

I've spent years trying to understand why international interventions so often feel disconnected from the realities they're meant to address. This book didn't just confirm that suspicion—it opened up the system and showed me why they get things wrong. The book is about more than country offices; it is really about systems and their blind spots.

My copy still has whole paragraphs underlined, and every time I have read it, it gives me something new. It gave me a different vocabulary for thinking about dysfunction—not as an accident but as a product of design.

I bought this book after hearing its author, Simon Sharpe, speak about it at a festival. His talk was very inspiring and convincing, and the book definitely matched my expectations.

As a sustainability academic, it really appealed to me the way he sets out how current practices in science, economics, and diplomacy don’t work, and then proceeds to provide alternative solutions to address climate change, which is very compelling.

I liked that the call for action was not in the obvious areas that we normally pursue for climate action, and that despite all setbacks and lack of progress, there is grounds for hope, and regardless of who we are or what we do, there are things we all can do. 

If you are interested in gaining a better understanding of why the UN fails so miserably at building and sustaining peace – read this new book. Adam Day works at the UN and uses ideas from complexity science to both explain why the UN is so challenged in its ultimate mission to sustain peace, and what it should do to move in the right direction. Day uses two current case studies on some of the most challenging situations faced by the international community and applies new ideas in useful and practical ways. This is the state-of-the-art of complexity-informed peacebuilding.

A colleague recommended this book, and I purchased a used one through Amazon. I found it very good reading on the dynamics of development aid and the regime of corruption and redundancy that often accompany it.

A very interesting and perhaps passionate take on the influence of foreign aid on development in Africa. Portrays the fact that aid can be both counterproductive and engendering of corruption in Africa. It advocates for both a nuanced and strategic deployment of such aid; limitation on aid as the only source of development funding; and enumerated other ways the international community can play a better and result-oriented role in Africa’s development.

Stephen Schneider was one of the leading scientists in the early days of climate modeling and one of the first climate scientists to understand the importance of science communication. I think of this book as both a memoir and a political primer for anyone interested in how warnings from climate scientists get attacked and undermined in the media.

The book is particularly good at explaining how the UN’s international reports on climate change came together and why mainstream media networks consistently miss the story when reporting on climate science.