Issue 4: October 2000

 

1. UNU marks 25th anniversary with global values conference

2. Founders honoured at silver anniversary symposium

3. UNU Rector to lead International Association of Universities

4. UNU stages conference on value of forests

5. Report on El Niño: Fix the roof while the sun shines

6. Annual WIDER lecture focuses on globalization and governance

7. Dr. José Luis Ramirez named Director of UNU/BIOLAC

8. Developing countries 'must invest in IT' - new book

9. Calendar of events and meetings


UNU marks 25th anniversary with
international conference on global values, ethics

Controversial issues such as gene research and the profound impact modern science and technology are having on the evolution of values and ethics worldwide will form a major focus of a three-day conference of hosted by UNU and its Institute of Advanced Studies, Oct. 24-26 at UNU Center, Tokyo.

The International Conference on Global Ethos will convene renowned international academics, practitioners and thinkers for a global conversation on dramatic shifts underway in such areas as science, politics, international justice, religion, and women’s rights and how these forces are transforming society everywhere.

The rapid and enormous changes in progress have the potential to produce a new world system that is stable, equitable and just. Managed poorly, however, they may instead add strain to an already stressed natural environment, widen the global gap between rich and poor, and further concentrate access to knowledge and influence over international decision making.

The conference will help celebrate UNU’s landmark 25th anniversary and form part of world observances of UN Day 2000 (Oct. 24).

UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan (top) and
 former U.S. President
Carter will address
the conference.

The conference themes will be:

  1. Global Capitalism and Sustainable Development

  2. Science, Knowledge and Ethics

  3. International Society, Justice and Equity

  4. Religion, Gender and Culture will be

Specific topics for 10 panels taking place over three days include: National Reconciliation and the Internationalization of Justice; Science and Ethics -- Gene Research; and Gender and Women’s Rights

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter will address the conference by videotape.  Keynote speakers include:

  • Hans Küng, Director Emeritus, Institute for Ecumenical Research, University of Tübingen (Germany);

  • Thomas Axworthy, Interaction Council, John F. Kennedy School of Government (USA);

  • Yersu Kim, Former Director, Universal Values Project, UNESCO Division of Philosophy and Ethics; Vigdis Finnbogadottir, former President, Republic of Iceland, and Chair, Council of Women World Leaders, Harvard; and

  • Abdul Salam Majali, former Prime Minister and Defense Minister, Jordan, and Chairman, World Affairs Council.

The conference is supported by the UN Development Programme, Tokyo Forum, Kikkoman Corporation, and Omron Corporation.

More information is online at the conference web site where proceedings will also be broadcast live.  Or contact the UNU Public Affairs Section, tel. (03) 5467 1243, -1246, fax (03) 3406 7346.


UNU to Honour Founders at Silver
Anniversary Symposium Oct. 23

UNU headquarters in Tokyo, venue for
the 25th anniversary symposium

UNU will celebrate its 25th anniversary with an international symposium: UNU at 25: Reaching Out to Japan and the World, at UNU Center, Tokyo, Oct. 23, 3 p.m.

The three-hour event will feature the first Michio Nagai Lecture, named after a leading figure behind the Japanese Government’s invitation to host UNU’s headquarters. The lecture will serve as an annual forum for eminent persons of the international community. Prof. Justin Thorens, former Rector of the University of Geneva, former President of the International Association of Universities (IAU), and former Chair of UNU’s Governing Council, will deliver the inaugural Nagai lecture.

UNU will also mark the occasion by naming its main conference halls after two other key figures in the university’s creation – former UN Secretary General U Thant and Elisabeth Rose of America, whose vision and commitment was vital to UNU’s establishment. Mrs. Rose, now in her 90s, will join the celebration of UNU’s silver anniversary. Among other guest speakers: James Hester, UNU’s first Rector and Heitor Gurgulino De Souza, UNU’s third Rector.

Messages about UNU -- its role in the past, present and future, its accomplishments and areas for improvement -- are being requested for display during the Symposium and to help plan for the future. The Symposium will combine a review of UNU’s historical development and examine its current role and position

For more information: UNU Public Affairs, tel. (03) 5467-1243, -1246; fax (03) 3406-7346.


UNU Rector to lead International
Association of Universities

Hans van Ginkel

UNU Rector Hans van Ginkel has been elected to a four year term as President of the International Association of Universities.

Founded in 1950, the UNESCO-based IAU convenes institutions and organizations from 150 countries for reflection and action on common concerns and collaborates with international, regional and national bodies active in higher education.

Its services are available to organizations, institutions and authorities concerned with higher education, as well as to individual policy and decision makers, specialists, administrators, teachers, researchers and students.

IAU’s mission is based on four principles:

  • the right to pursue knowledge for its own sake,

  • to follow wherever the search for truth may lead,

  • tolerance of divergent opinion, and

  • freedom from political interference.

The Association also aims to give expression to the obligation of universities as social institutions to promote, through teaching and research, the principles of freedom and justice, of human dignity and solidarity, and contributes, through international cooperation, to the development of material and moral assistance for the strengthening of higher education in general.


UNU Stages Conference
on Value of Forests

The multiple values of forests in promoting sustainable development will be highlighted at an upcoming conference organized by United Nations University. Delegates will discuss the proposal for an international year of forests, future forest management practices and valuation and awareness building.

The event, "The Values of Forests – International Conference on Forests and Sustainable Development", will be held October 12 and 13 at UNU Centre in Tokyo. It is being co-organized by the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD) and the Japanese Environment and Forestry agencies.

Speakers will include: Wakako Hironaka, Member, House of Councillors, Japanese Diet; Ola Ullsten, Former Prime Minister of Sweden and Co-Chair of the WCFSD; Matti Palo of the Finnish Forest Research Institute; George Woodwell, President of the Woods Hole Research Center; naturalist and writer C.W. Nicol; and other distinguished scholars.

For more information, visit the conference web site  or contact UNU Public Affairs, tel. (03) 5467-1243, -1246; fax (03) 3406-7346


Report on El Niño: Fix the
roof while the sun shines

NASA satellite photo of the 1997 El Niño
 shows the large warm water mass
off  the west coast of the Americas

UNU is among a group of UN agencies that, together with the US-based National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), will release a new report this month that spells out lessons drawn from 16 countries during the “El Niño of the Century” in 1997-98.

The study looked at experiences in 16 countries -- Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Mozambique, Kenya, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, Vietnam, Philippines, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji – and warns that thousands of deaths and tens of billions of dollars in economic damage will continue to befall the world’s developing countries every two to seven years until an investment is made to improve forecasting and preparedness against El Niño.

Financed by the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships, the study is scheduled for release in Washington DC Oct. 26 and will be online at http://www.esig.ucar.edu/un/. For more information contact Zafir Adeel.


Annual WIDER Lecture Focuses on
Globalization and  Governance

Jagdish Bhagwati

Noted economist Jagdish Bhagwati will speak about the need to devise  domestic and international policy frameworks to offset the negative effects of globalization when he gives the WIDER Annual Lecture Nov. 27.

Professor Bhagwati contends that globalization has come in for indiscriminate attack from critics who do not distinguish between different types of globalization (e.g. freer trade, freer capital flows, freer direct investment, and freer immigration) or between very different but often-confused questions such as: is globalization bypassing the poor or is it actually harming them. Arguing that, in the main, globalization has a human face, the Lecture will then focus on Appropriate Governance to devising domestic and international institutional policy frameworks to offset the downsides that define the few warts on that human face.

Jagdish Bhagwati is the Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics and of Political Science at Columbia University and the Andre Meyer Senior Fellow in International Economics at the Council on Foreign Relations, New York. He was Ford International Professor of Economics at MIT and served as 
the Economic Policy Adviser to the Director General of GATT (1991-93).

Professor Bhagwati is a leading economist, best known for contributions to the theory of international trade policy. He also writes frequently on public policy in leading newspapers and magazines. He has received many Honorary Degrees and Prizes, among them the Bernhard Harms Prize (Germany), the Freedom Prize (Switzerland), the Seidman Distinguished Award for Political Economy (USA) and the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal (India).

Click here to register for the lecture and reception.


Dr. José Luis Ramirez named
new Director of UNU/BIOLAC

Dr. José Luis Ramirez

Venezuelan geneticist Dr. José Luis Ramirez Ochoa has been appointed Director of the UNU's Programme for Biotechnology in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNU/BIOLAC).

Dr. Ramirez, 56, is a professor of Genetics at the Central University of Venezuela where he heads both the Department of Graduate Studies in Cell Biology and the Molecular Genetics Groups. He is a Ph.D. in molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University.

An expert on tropical diseases, Dr. Ramirez has published numerous papers on Leishmaniasis, Chaga's disease and other parasitic infections and serves as a high level Advisor and permanent collaborator of the Central American Network of Tropical Diseases.


Developing countries must 
invest in IT - new book 

The use of information technology (IT) is now so widely spread in the world economy that no country can ignore any longer the need to invest in these technologies if it wants to improve the standard of living of its citizens, according to a new book from UNU's World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU/WIDER).

In recent years, information technology has had a strong influence on economic growth in industrial countries and at least some newly industrialised countries. However, developing countries seem to have neither invested in IT not benefited from such investments to the same extent as industrial countries.

Investment in infrastructure, physical capital and education is an old policy prescription in the economics of development, says editor Marri Pohjola in his introduction to Technology, Productivity and Economic Growth: International Evidence and Implications for Economic Growth. What is new in the analyses presented in this book is the recommendation that the information technology component of these investments should be high.


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Revised: February 22, 2001