News

A joint post by Dr. Mindel van de Laar and Katerina Triantos. There’s a first time for everything. Recently, in partnership with the Dutch government and the SURF organisation, we’ve developed online courses to help students choose their tracks (the basic idea is that if they’re better informed from...

UNU-MERIT offers a weekly digest highighting the week's most important Innovation and Technology stories. You can read the newsletter online or subscribe to the e-zine, which is sent out every Friday. Check out this week's headlines....

Latin American countries have long been major exporters of mineral resources and are therefore some of the main recipients of mining investments. It is no surprise, then, that the region showed strong economic performance during the last commodity boom super-cycle. However, there are few world-class...

Canada is consistently one of the top 10 destination countries for international migrants. More than 7.5 million foreign-born Canadians entered the country through the immigration process, according to 2016 Census data — representing more than one in five Canadians and more than one third of school-...

I would define my family in light of the lasting integration of Europe, which began with three Catholic Founding Fathers in 1945. When a handful of visionaries – Adenauer, De Gasperi, and Schuman – put us on the path to an integrated Europe; to the peaceful borderless region that we live in today....

A joint post by Praem Mehta and Katie Kuschminder The human rights violations and targeted violence against Rohingya communities in Rakhine State, Myanmar have forced over 687,000 people to flee to Bangladesh since 25 August 2017. As of 30 March 2018 there are now more than 898,000 Rohingya refugees...

In 2017, the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced the end of net neutrality in the USA. The decision was taken unilaterally by FCC Chairman Commissioner, Ajit Pai, and other unelected board members, without consulting key actors from civil society. This decision was and is...

The Earth’s climate is changing and human action is the leading cause, according to 97% of peer-reviewed research papers. Yet this ‘climate change consensus’ is increasingly challenged by populist media and politicians, who distort research and cherry pick data. Media may be part of the ...

Seven years into the war, Syria has seen over 400,000 casualties and more than 5 million refugees. Those still in the country suffer from chemical attacks and brutalities from all belligerent actors, with no end in sight. The question after so many years of bloodshed: isn’t it time for the UN to ste...

For many Europeans, mobility within the European Union is such an inherent part of everyday life that the availability of precise statistics on these movements may seem like a given. However, a new data-mapping exercise conducted as part of the REMINDER project has revealed that our understanding of...

‘Leave no one behind’ is one of the boldest commitments in the UN’s 2030 Agenda. But what exactly does this mean? UNU-MERIT’s Prof. Shyama Ramani and Dr. Maty Konte joined the Global Festival of Action for Sustainable Development in Bonn, March 2018, to explain our work and efforts in this regard. I...

Emerging Markets is the latest specialisation in the bachelor’s programmes in International Business and Economics and Business Economics at Maastricht University. New as it may be, it is already popular. It has even spurred the development of a follow-up programme to be launched in September 2018: ...

A joint post by Bruno Martorano, Laura Metzger, and Marco Sanfilippo. An ‘earth-shaking rise’ is how The Diplomat magazine describes China’s evolution from a poor country to a global superpower. The international community, however, is torn between admiration for the country’s achievements and criti...

A guest post by Master’s student Zoë Ogahara. Videos produced by Zachary Strain. Classrooms in the EU are becoming more diverse, creating a wealth of learning opportunities but also presenting specific challenges. To put this in perspective, there are 5.4 million child migrants in Europe and c...

Prof. Pierre Mohnen will lead UNU-MERIT’s stake in WATSON – a new 1 million euro innovation project funded by the European Commission. Part of the Horizon 2020 programme, WATSON is an 18-month project involving EU research institutions and SMEs working in Fintech, financial services and econom...

Thirty staff and students from UNU-MERIT spent five days of the carnival break exploring Geneva; learning about the institutions based there and networking with staff and alumni. The trip itself was an impressive feat of organisation, involving 10 committee members from our Master of Science in Publ...

The next deadline for scholarship applications to our ‘Evidence-Based Policy Research Methods’ (EPRM) programme is 21 March 2018. In this post we hear from recent participant Gilbert Riboni. … As part of reinventing myself after a 21-year career in a high-stress job, I was looking to ree...

March 2018 marks the relaunch of two online group-based courses: ‘Introduction to Political Science’ and ‘Governance in Theory and Practice’, which will now start at fixed intervals. Course coordinator Dr. Mindel van de Laar spoke with one of our long-term tutors, Biljana Meshkovska, about this smal...

Governments worldwide have pledged to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. But given the scale of the task, not even national governments can manage alone. This has sparked a new phenomenon: whereby non-governmental players – from start-ups to social enterprises to multinational...

There’s no disputing that many African countries’ education systems are in trouble. Despite significant investment and some improvements linked to the push to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, children in large parts of Africa are simply not being well taught or learning what is needed as th...