UNITAR: a dynamic renaissance in the 1990s - United Nations Institute for Training and Research

UN Chronicle, June, 1990

In one of the most ambitious, innovative moves in its 25-year history, the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) is negotiating the opening of an international training centre for diplomats and other key government specialists in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States.

One proposal is the construction of a brand-new, state-of-the- art facility near Emory University, not far from the Carter Presidential Center and downtown Atlanta's bustling business district. A sizeable endowment fund is being sought for the project, which has strong support from Atlanta Mayor Maynard jackson, Georgia Governor joe Frank Harris and influential members of the local academic and business communities. Since it was founded in 1965, UNITAR has trained some 12,000 people from 173 countries, most of them diplomats and other officials from developing nations. In addition, some 23,000 have attended UNITAR research seminars and international conferences. The Institute's goal is to help these persons make better use of the UN and its agencies and better function in the increasingly complex arena of international affairs. Since 1968, UNITAR has also issued more than 200 publications, most of them the product of research projects on subjects ranging from marine pollution and transfer of petrochemical technology to peace-making strategies, external debt management and the "brain drain" from developing to developed countries. With the opening of its Atlanta center in mid-1991, UNITAR will become the first UN institution to have a substantial presence in the United States outside of New York City and Washington, D.C. An international conference on human rights, planned by UNITAR in cooperation with Emory, Tulane and other universities, is expected to kick off the inauguration events.

The Atlanta venture-along with fully booked and enthusiastically received seminars and workshops in New York and Geneva, and an upsurge of interest in UNITAR advisory services-all point to a possible renaissance of the Institute in the 1990s after years of financial tribulations. "I'm optimistic about the future of UNITAR because we have products of quality, and it's that quality that has kept us in business in spite of everything", says Executive Director Michel Doo Kingue. A big man with a booming voice and a sharp, down-to-earth intellect, Mr. Doo Kingue, who is from the African republic of Cameroon, has no doubts that UNITAR will prevail. For the most part, UNITAR survives from one year to the next by soliciting contributions from Governments. However, since 1980, the General Assembly has given UNITAR three grants to balance its budget and two loans, one of them to purchase the land on which the UNITAR building in New York stands on First Avenue near UN Headquarters.

Government contributions, although crucial for some administrative and programme purposes, account for about only a third at most of what the Institute actually spends. The rest is painstakingly raised, project by project, from other sources.

But such fund-raising successes, tied in to specific activities, do not solve the problem of how to fund the Institute's core budget-the one that provides the salaries of the small, dedicated staff in New York and Geneva and maintains the First Avenue premises.

"So I'm selling the building", Mr. Doo Kingue says. The stolid four-story stone structure was purchased 25 years ago with money donated by the Rockefeller Foundation. "The sale is a positive development because it will allow us to make a clean start."

Seven years ago, Mr. Doo Kingue was asked by UN Secretary-General javier Perez de Cuellar to revitalize the Institute and make it financially healthy. "I inherited a number of financial problems. And Governments were then not helping much", he reflects. Money from the building sale will be used to set up a reserve fund for the Institute-a financial safety net, a cushion against future crises. But Mr. Doo Kingue is quick to warn that the reserve fund in itself will not solve the Institute's financial problems. Only increased government contributions will do that.

In 1987, the General Assembly asked the Institute to concentrate on training, placing research on the "back burner". Although abiding by that decision-no money was earmarked for research in the 1988 and 1989 austerity budgets-Mr. Doo Kingue says that ultimately training cannot be undertaken properly without research. If he can find extra-budgetary funds, the Assembly will certainly not object to UNITAR again flexing its analytical muscles.

He hopes that the Institute's new visibility in Atlanta will open up new opportunities for research on the UN in universities all over the United States and abroad, and will whet an appetite for participation of private foundations and philantropists.

This year, the Institute will help Oman set up a school for diplomats, Angola re-structure its Foreign Affairs Ministry to better deal with free market economies, and Malta groom future multilateral negotiators.