Climate change is one of the most pressing global challenges for the international community. Linked to a growing list of natural disasters – from droughts and desertification to floods and melting ice caps – climate change poses an existential threat to all of humanity. Against this backdrop, a coordinated international response is not only warranted but desperately needed. Acting as the main forum for dialogue and collective action, the United Nations (including all agencies, funds and program...
Every March 8th the international community honours women for their many and various achievements in the struggle for gender equality. For centuries women’s movements have fought for the rights and freedoms of women and girls – but not in a zero-sum game. Already in 1792 British author and activist Mary Wollstonecraft wrote: “I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.” The movement has seen many successes, even in the last few months. In December 2015, Saudi Arabia b...
As a migration researcher as well as a first-generation migrant descended of migrants, mobility has been a major feature of my adult life. I find it difficult to separate my own migration story from that of my ancestors because it is precisely their decisions and trajectories that enabled my own....
As Maastricht University enters Period 4 of the 2015/2016 Academic Year, University College Maastricht (UCM) is offering a new course on migration led by the Migration Studies Group at UNU-MERIT, including Melissa Siegel, Özge Bilgili, Michaella Vanore and myself, Katie Kuschminder as the Course Coordinator and Developer. The course was added to the Bachelor’s options in late 2015, and now has more than 80 students enrolled. Here are three key reasons why it is important to study migration: 1. M...
Our latest workshop on the ‘Design and Evaluation of Innovation Policies’ (DEIP) was co-hosted in January 2016 by UNU-MERIT, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and Panama’s National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation (SENACYT). This four-day course gathered around 40 policymakers from Panama, Costa Rica and Honduras, as well as innovation experts from around the world. To put things in context, we spoke with a number of local representatives, including Ga...
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...
How can we encourage more people to lead active lives, not only in general but also in an educational setting? We know that obesity and health problems are linked to a lack of exercise and we see a clear relationship between leading an active life and better health in general. Both feature a great deal in academia, but a less studied area is the impact of a healthy, active life and movement on educational performance. Academics have studied the relationship between moving and thinking and the re...
It's nearly 100 years since the ‘Easter Rising’ in Dublin, an armed struggle that would lead to Irish independence after centuries of British rule. For the Irish side of my family, this was not an abstract moment in history. It changed all of our lives and all of our destinies; it meant new homes, new loyalties, new opportunities, but also great loss. Put simply, my Irish ancestors lived through the kind of violence and displacement endured by millions of people across the Middle East today....
“The 2030 Agenda forms the new global development framework anchored around 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with a total of 169 targets covering economic, social development, and environmental protection… In particular, Africa can take advantage of this universality of the 2030 Agenda to create partnerships across the goals and ensure effective implementation.” Maged Abdelfatah Abdelaziz, UN Special Adviser on Africa Our second international conference on ‘Sustainable D...
Postdoctoral researcher Dr. Katie Kuschminder has won a ‘Rubicon’ grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). Kuschminder will now spend two years at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute, close to Florence in Italy. Research Kuschminder will conduct research on Nigerian and Syrian migrants arriving in Europe via Italy. ...