Sir Richard Jolly is Honorary Professor and Research Associate of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. He was the second Director of IDS from 1972-81 and then from 1982-95 Deputy Executive Director for Programmes of UNICEF, with the rank of UN Assistant Secretary General.
From 1996-2000, he was the Special Adviser to the Administrator of UNDP and Principal Coordinator of the widely acclaimed Human Development Report, overseeing reports on a human development approach to growth, poverty, consumption, globalization and human rights.
After this, he became co-director of the UN Intellectual History Project based at City University, New York, which led to a 16 volume history of the UN’s contributions to economic and social development since 1945. Richard was the senior author of the summary volume, UN Ideas That Changed the World. Summaries of all the volumes can be found on www.unhistory.org and a CD-ROM is available with the full transcripts of the 79 interviews with four Secretary Generals and others who have made major contributions to the UN.
Richard Jolly has served on the Council of the Overseas Development Institute and from 2001-6 was a Trustee of OXFAM and Chairman of the UN Association of the United Kingdom. He was made a Knight of the Order of St. Michael and St George in the New Year’s and knighted by the Queen in 2001 for his contributions to international development.
In UNICEF, Richard Jolly had responsibilities for UNICEF’s programmes in over 130 countries of the world, including UNICEF’s strategy for support to countries in reducing child mortality and implementing the goals agreed at the 1990 World Summit for Children. In UNICEF, he also led the agency’s efforts to ensure more attention to the needs of children and women in the making of economic adjustment policies, and co-authored the book Adjustment with a Human Face.
As a senior UN official, Richard Jolly was also closely involved with reform and collaboration among the operational agencies. From 1996 to 2000 he chaired the system-wide UN Sub-Committee on Nutrition (SCN) and from 1997-2004 the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), both of which prepared major reports setting out global goals and strategies for reducing malnutrition and ensuring access to hygiene, sanitation and water on a world-wide basis.
During his time in IDS in the 1970s, he co-directed with Hans Singer in 1972, the ILO Employment Mission to Kenya,published as Employment,Incomes and Equality. In 1978, he served as Special Consultant on North-South issues to the Secretary-General of the OECD in 1978, and from 1978-1981 was a member and for three years rapporteur of the United Nations Committee on Development Planning. From 1982-1985, Richard Jolly was Vice President of the Society for International Development and from 1987-1996,Chairman of SID’s North/South Roundtable.
He has written or been a co-author of some 20 books including five of the volumes on UN history, UN Ideas That Changed the World; The Power of UN Ideas: lessons from the first 60 years; UN Voices: the struggle for development and Social Justice; UN Contributions to Development Thinking and Practice (2004) and Ahead of the Curve (2002); five Human Development Reports(1996 to 2000), and a number of other books including Jim Grant: UNICEF Visionary (2002), Development with a Human Face (1998); Adjustment with a Human Face (1987); The Bretton Woods Institutions and the United Nations; Challenges for the 21st Century (1995); Disarmament and World Development (1984); Planning Education for African Development (1969) and some 100 scholarly and more popular articles. Richard prepared a Short History of IDS for the Institute’s 40th anniversary, which was issued as an IDS Discussion Paper (388) and in 2014 a book on UNICEF: Global Governance that Works (Routledge).
On a lighter note, in 1959, Richard Jolly was secretary of the British Alpine Hannibal Expedition, which investigated Hannibal’s route across the Alps with the aid of Jumbo, a 1.5 ton elephant. This raised money for the UN’s World Refugee Year and led to Richard’s first published article “Hannibal’s route across the Alps: results of an empirical test”. There have been two anniversary crossings in 2009 and 2014, though each without an elephant.
