UNU and the future

If UNU mission is “to contribute, through research and capacity building, to efforts to resolve the pressing global problems that are a concern of the United Nations, its Peoples and Member States“.

But the budget of 40 million dollars (not from the regular budget of UN),  for a think tank of 306 people, developing “the ideas of the future” by high level international work group, don´t even have updated their data since 2005, they are pretty slow in getting the new media advantages and to ask “the peoples” which are the pressing problems, to open the academia and spread their knowledge and find in “the people” the solutions, they are far from the organization that are making real changes and facing real challenges.

While the money of UN is spent in burocracy, , you have people like One Voice working on projects between palestinan and israelis to stop the conflict, the guys of Hip Hop Caucus using music to spread their voices and let people know the reality of complex situation such the one with Kathrina, and they have achieved the engagement of people being part of the solution, being policy-makers.

Then you have to contrast the rigid structure of UNU with the new ways people has discovered to tell the real stories, and moving people to act in favor of causes or situations that have to be considered by decision makers, communities discovering new solutions for the future. But they have done important steps in online learning.

It might be great to see many alliances between UNU and emergent movements such as One Voice and Hip Hop Caucus, and it can be connected with private companies of new technologies that can help UNU and UN in general to achieve their goals.