United Nations-Sponsored World Conferences

What value were the widely publicised United Nations-sponsored World Conferences in the 1990s and what was actually accomplished at the global meetings in Rio, Vienna, and Beijing? The authors of United Nations-sponsored World Conferences demonstrate through their case studies that answering these sorts of questions requires a focus on the follow-up to and implementation of the Conferences and not simply attention to the conferences themselves. They argue that the terms of public debate on the accomplishments of such conferences, and thus the future of similar conferences, must include a careful assessment of their impacts long after the final documents have been passed.They suggest that previous works on such conferences have only told part of the story and thus should not, by themselves, be used as a basis for public policy decisions regarding their future.