Worldwide Development of Astronomy: The Story of a Decade of UN/ESA Workshops on Basic Space Science

In 1990 the United Nations in cooperation with the European Space Agency initiated the organization of a series of annual Workshops on Basic Space Science for the benefit of astronomers and space scientists in Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Western Asia, and Europe. This article summarizes accomplishments of these Workshops and their follow-up projects.