By Luk Van Langenhove and Luc Soete, former directors of UNU-CRIS and UNU-MERIT Hans van Ginkel, who passed away on Thursday, 27 July 2023, was a formidable figure by any standard. He was also one of those rare individuals who knew he could make a difference − and so he did through his times in charge of the largest Dutch university, Utrecht University, and the smallest international university, the United Nations University (UNU). Intellectual, managerial and entrepreneurial Intellectually, Ha...
Thinking ahead to International Women’s Day on Monday I recalled two pivotal resolutions the United Nations General Assembly had adopted within a week of each other in 1972, one (27/2951) on December 11 establishing the United Nations University and the other (27/3010), on December 18, proclaiming 1975 as International Women’s Year. It is instructive to put those two resolutions in the chronological context of the Education Amendments of 1972 in the United States, enacted barely six months earli...
Prof. Bartel Van de Walle assumed the directorship of UNU-MERIT on 1 September 2020, and during his first day in office led an interactive welcome talk with staff online and in person. He then took time out to speak with the United Nations Regional Information Centre in Western Europe (UNRIC), contributing in Dutch and French to their ‘Faces of the UN‘ series. Bartel talked about his challenges and priorities and how, in New York in 2001, he suddenly shifted focus from abstract mathe...
Forty-five years ago today ― on 1 September 1975 ― the United Nations University (UNU) commenced operations in Tokyo with a staff of fewer than 30 individuals and an annual budget of just over 3 million USD. Today, UNU has grown into a global organisation with a presence in more than a dozen countries, a personnel complement of some 670, and an annual budget of nearly 55 million USD. The mission of UNU remains unchanged: to contribute, through collaborative research and education, to efforts to ...
The United Nations University (UNU) is pleased to announce the appointment of Professor Bartel Van de Walle as the next Director of the United Nations University Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT). Prof. Van de Walle will take up his position on 1 September 2020. Prof. Van de Walle will take over from current Director Prof. Bart Verspagen, who will complete his second term on 31 August 2020. Under his directorship over the last eight years,...
“It's the first time I've felt 'at home' so quickly in a new environment. Every day at UNU-MERIT is a pleasure. The tutorial sessions are alive, dynamic and very interesting! You can tell that every student is happy to be here and entirely committed.” ...
As of January 2016, coordination responsibilities for the UNU Migration Network were handed over from UNU-GCM in Spain to UNU-MERIT in the Netherlands. Dr. Melissa Siegel of UNU-MERIT is now the day-to-day coordinator of the Migration Network, assisted by Ms. Elaine McGregor, also of UNU-MERIT. Dr. David M. Malone, Rector of the United Nations University and Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, noted how “The Network has registered numerous successes in a very short period of tim...
GLOBALLY each day almost 1000 children under 5 die from diarrhoea caused by contaminated water. More than 2.4 billion people – a third of all humanity – have no access to sanitation. And as populations grow, water is set to become a new source of danger, of conflict, given the rapid urban expansion of Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Meanwhile, as climate change accelerates, we are likely to see more extreme and frequent droughts, floods and typhoons. Again, people in emergi...