News

This week our new director Bartel Van de Walle met regional governor Theo Bovens, ahead of UN Day on 24 October 2020. The two leaders discussed the state of the province and the planet, how to ensure young people are listened to and empowered, and how our staff and fellows are ambassadors for the UN...

The current pandemic is a fork in the road, highlighting the need for more sustainable economies and more resilient societies – a fact reflected in pledges made by the European Commission, the G20 group of nations, and various national governments to ‘build back something better’. In the policy brie...

No matter how much we like to think of ourselves as informed consumers, the majority of us do not fully understand the complexity of the arrangements needed to get even the most basic commodities to our tables safely, reliably and with any luck, tastily. The journey of the humble cornflake from corn...

UNICEF Kyrgyzstan has just released two new reports co-authored by Franziska Gassmann and Eszter Timar: a multidimensional poverty assessment for the Kyrgyz Republic, and a position paper on social assistance for poor families with children. The first report proposes a national multidimensional pove...

While the rise of populist politicians in the Europe and the US gets a lot of attention from the media and researchers alike, the drivers of the populism taking hold in emerging and developing economies still receives relatively little scrutiny. In a new working paper we provide new evidence tracing...

A new report out from the International Labour Organization features contributions from five researchers at UNU-MERIT. Along with the ILO’s youth employment specialist Drew Gardiner, Micheline Goedhuys collaborated with Alison Cathles, Chen Gong, Michelle González Amador and Eleonora Nillesen....

I was eight years old when I learned that ‘we’ are guests in Syria, the country where I spent 34 years of my life before I moved to Europe and became a recognised citizen of the Netherlands. The story traces back to the year 1948, when both my grandparents were forcibly eradicated from their home in...

Is it possible for politics and science to influence one another yet remain separate? To what extent should scientists be made accountable for the research that informs policy? What is the appropriate apparatus to mediate these issues? And what is the role of the media in shaping the public’s unders...

A report out today from the United Nations Economist Network features contributions from UNU-WIDER’s Carlos Gradín and UNU-MERIT’s Neil Foster-McGregor – respectively writing on inequalities and the emergence of digital technologies. The report examines five megatrends: climate cha...

‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution cannot function without high quality data, statistics and knowledge products, as these are fundamental for evidence-based policymaking and monitoring inclusive and sustainable industrial development.’ Fernando Cantu Bazaldua, Chief Statistician, UNIDO This was the g...

Imagine being born in rural India. Imagine being Swapnali Sutar. You come top of your class in primary school and are able to enter secondary education. You work hard and your dream of becoming a veterinary doctor gradually seems possible. Until one day COVID-19 stops the world in its tracks. Your s...

Dr Katie Kuschminder has won a ‘Starting Grant’ from the European Research Council. Designed for postdocs with between two and seven years’ experience, the 1.5 million euro grant will enable Katie to form her own research team, which will focus on reintegration governance for migra...

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), contr...

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...

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 countri...

Ongoing war and conflict, starting in the late 1970s, have made Afghanistan a major emigrant country. For more than four decades, most Afghan families, including my own, have migrated either internally or externally, mainly for safety....

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 hel...

While the end of the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is not yet in sight, there is growing focus on the ways and means to build back better, by resetting the way we produce, consume, socialise and interact. What are the possibilities of tomorrow, and how can countries leverage them to reset t...

As a research institute, UNU-MERIT has some of the brightest minds investigating the topic of entrepreneurship. In this brief Q&A, PhD fellows Maria Tomai and Tamara Kool describe how entrepreneurs can drive positive change, particularly in the fields of migration and sustainability. Maria looks...

I am one of the latest people in a long line of around 130 years of continuous migration in my family – a privilege to which I owe many of my accomplishments. My mother is Iranian and my father is German. Although I was born in Germany, I was still a baby when my parents decided to migrate to Paragu...