Loraine Sievers is Career international civil servant and former Chief of the UN Security Council Secretariat Branch.

Sam Daws is Director of the Project on UN Governance and Reform at the Centre for International Studies at Oxford University.

Loraine Sievers served the United Nations for over thirty years, concluding her career as Chief of the Security Council Secretariat Branch. Amongst her primary responsibilities was providing guidance to Council members, particularly each month's rotating Presidency, concerning the Council's procedures and practices. Loraine also participated as the Secretariat expert in the Security Council Informal Working Group on Documentation and Other Procedural Questions from 2006-11. Previously, she served as Secretary to the Afghanistan and Sierra Leone Sanctions Committees, Programme Officer in the Iraq Oil-for-Food Programme, political analyst in the Regional Affairs Division, and speechwriter. Loraine contributed to the Repertoire of the Practice of the Security Council and several of the UN 'Blue Books' on conflict situations addressed by the Organization.

Sam Daws has served in a variety of UN related roles over the last 25 years, and currently directs a project on UN governance and reform at the Centre for International Studies, Oxford University. Sam has recently served as Senior Principal Research Analyst in the Multilateral Policy Directorate of the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office and then as Deputy Director (United Nations, Prime Minister's Post-2015 team) in the Cabinet Office. He spent six years as Executive Director of the UN Association of the UK, and then became Senior Advisor and UK Representative to the UN Foundation. From 2000 to 2003 he served as First Officer in the Executive Office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Co-author or editor of six books on the UN, Sam has degrees in social anthropology and international conflict analysis, and undertook doctoral studies in international relations at Oxford University. He has been a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University (in international law) and Yale University (in UN studies).

"The fourth edition of this comprehensive text, first published in 1975, continues in the tradition of its previous versions by combining an exhaustive account of the practice of the Security Council with examples and anecdotes to illustrate how the Council works, and how it doesn't. For a 744-page book that deals with procedure, it is a highly readable tome written in a non-scholarly fashion that combines the rigor of an academic text with the prose of a journalist." -UN TRIBUNE

"Sievers and Daws shed light on the intricacies of council procedures. Like its preceding editions, the book successfully makes the council's work plain to interested readers, be it scholar, student, diplomat or journalist. It's a surprisingly uncomplicated, highly readable book, compared with the usual scholarly works on the UN, written in academic jargon. It is highly recommended to all interested in the UN, as appreciating the important changes can play a key role in building support for the council's work in maintaining international peace." -PassBlue

"The new fourth edition of this comprehensive tome is engaging in its narrative and practical in its approach. Recommended Books and Reports for 2015." -IPI Global Observatory

"...an impressive 450 pages of new material. The accompanying website www.scprocedure.org is a real gold mine. It is used to keep the book continuously updated. The book...provides a history, a written record of the institutional memory of the Council. The anecdotal style of the earlier versions is preserved in this new edition. This makes the study a great pleasure to read." -Academic Council of the United Nations System