Inspired by the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement, this series is the product of an international team from UNU-MERIT that first came together in the summer of 2020. It aims to provide a substantial and accessible platform in the fight against racism, articulated by young African thought-leaders who put a premium on robust debate and other non-violent approaches. #blacklivesmatter #whiteforblack … One issue barely registers in the Black Lives Matter movement, and that is the career challenges ...

This is an extraordinary moment in world history. While it is too early to assess the global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement, emerging evidence indicates that it has made significant progress. The first significant impact of the protests has been the toppling of Confederate and slavery-related statues around the world. In England, protesters toppled the statue of Edward Colston, a prominent slave trader. In Belgium, protesters set fire to a statue of King Leopold II. In the USA, statue...

Since the end of World War II, the United States of America has been the leading voice in the promotion of human rights, equality and non-discrimination. In fact, from 1933 to 1945, it was the US First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt who spearheaded the drafting and negotiations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which eventually came into force in 1948. Human rights explicitly became a major part of US foreign policy in the 1970s, and since 1976 the Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, ...

It is with deep sadness that we bring you the news that our colleague and friend Ibrahima Sory Kaba passed away on 1 September 2020, at the age of 32. Ibrahima started at UNU-MERIT as a PhD fellow, and completed his PhD thesis entitled ‘Aggregate Fluctuations and Development: Essays on Macroeconomic Volatility and Economic Growth’ in 2019. After his period as PhD fellow, he took up a teaching position at UNU-MERIT’s sister department, MILE, at Maastricht University’s School of Business and Econo...

Amid profound instability unleashed with the Libyan civil war and rival factions vying for power, conditions facing the roughly 650,000 migrants who remain in Libya have been dire. Those living in the community are vulnerable to extortion, violence, and slave-like work conditions, while migrants held in detention centres may experience overcrowding, sexual abuse, forced labour, torture, and deprivation of food, sunlight, and water. Amid entrenched fighting around Tripoli, including a deadly airs...

I flew into Pretoria, South Africa, in March 2020 – just when COVID-19 was becoming a fully-fledged international crisis. Working under the umbrella of the CatChain project, I aimed to access and use the confidential firm-level dataset managed by the National Treasury of South Africa (NT). This is a relatively new dataset and, in partnership with our sister institute UNU-WIDER, the NT has welcomed researchers from all around the world to do research using these South African data. My PhD project...

PhD fellow Mariajose Silva-Vargas from UNU-MERIT and graduate student Francesco Loiacono from the Institute for International Economic Studies have been awarded two grants — from the Peace & Recovery Competitive Fund from Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) and the Private Enterprise Development in Low Income Countries (PEDL) research initiative — for a total of US$ 100,000 to study labour market integration of refugees in developing countries. Refugees and access to labour mark...

A joint post by Sam Jones, Eva-Maria Egger and Ricardo Santos, United Nations University – WIDER As the COVID-19 virus has spread across the globe, developing countries are starting to enact many of the same policies used in China, Europe and North America to contain the virus. But are these policies appropriate in low income contexts? To help think about this we propose a simple index of lockdown readiness which identifies the share of households that could feasibly shelter at home for a ...

                                #EarthDay2020 The Green Academy Project proved to me yet again that if we as academics participate in co-designed projects with social enterprises and NGOs, we can create real community value as well as scientific papers! This project is also a milestone for SITE4Society for it is serving to train students from Maastricht University’s School of Business and Economics, making them grow and providing them with splendid material for their Bachelor dissertations...

Tens of thousands of East and West African migrants face violence, abuse, torture and loss of life as they transit through Libya to reach the Mediterranean. Are the migrants victims of human smuggling, human trafficking or neither? In the absence of a stable government in Libya, what can European countries do to prevent the loss of life and torture of migrants in Libya?...