Teaching the United Nations

More than sixty academics and professionals from across Central and Southeast Europe working in United Nations-related fields gathered at the Diplomatic Academy Vienna, Austria, on Saturday, 22 November, for a symposium to discuss the topic "Can the 'United Nations' be Taught?".

Sponsored by the Academic Council on the United Nations, the Austrian Science and Research Liaison Office Ljubljana, and the Central and Eastern European International Studies Association, the symposium examined how well knowledge about the UN is being communicated through schools and universities to students, teachers, the public, governmental and non-governmental organizations, among international agencies, and on the Internet. The meeting was a unique opportunity to share ideas on how the United Nations could be taught and what users (i.e. students and teachers), as well as "suppliers" expect from each other.

Keynote speaker Thomas Stelzer, Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs at UN Headquarters in New York, put an emphasis on the close interaction between the United Nations, researchers and the academia. During the afternoon session UN entities, such as IAEA, UNU and UNODC presented their tools for teaching the UN and also for how the UN could learn from the academic world.

During the session Maher Nasser, Director of United Nations Information Service Vienna, introduced several student and teacher friendly online learning sources available through diverse online outlets of the United Nations system. Patricia Goff, Executive Director of ACUNS, insisted on a bridging of the theory/practice divide and promoted active learning, e.g. through case studies with guests from the practical field. Several representatives from Universities in Austria, North America, Central and South-Eastern Europe demonstrated different methods in UN targeted education and UN related studies. Also, the issue of internship at the UN offices was raised, highlighting the need for more supervision and financial support.

The hope of a fruitful cooperation in the future could be extracted from the lecture of Axel Wüstenhagen, former Director of UNIS Vienna, who introduced a research project aiming to identify courses offered by Austrian universities and post-graduate institutions. According to Wüstenhagen the conclusion can be drawn, that "innovative approaches and methods to teach about the UN… could point the way, how to bridge the existing gap in the Organization's outreach to the academic community".

The organizers are planning to publish the contributions and ideas offered at the colloquium together with further articles on that subject in a special edition of the "Favorita Papers", the book series of the Diplomatic Academy of Vienna.