The InterDependent

Many of the nongovernmental organizations working with the United Nations are virtually unknown to the broad public. This is certainly true for the Academic Council on the United Nations System, or Acuns.

Acuns is an association of educational and research institutions, individual scholars, teachers and practitioners who are active in the work and study of the UN (www.acuns.org). The organization was founded in 1987 by a small group of academics – primarily from the United States, Canada and Mexico – who were concerned that research results were not sufficiently included in UN programs. They were also concerned about the lack of academic research and teaching devoted to the UN in general.

Acuns combines its independence and flexibility with maximum output: the secretariat, with an executive director and executive secretary, is hosted in five-year rotations by a university agreeing to be the organizational and financial headquarters for that period. It began operating at Dartmouth College and then moved to Brown and Yale Universities. Since 2003, its headquarters has been at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.

Recently, the board invited Acuns’s institutional members to compete to be the next host from 2013 onward. It could conceivably move back to a U.S. university to enhance programs on international relations and international law, or it could migrate for one or two five-year terms to Europe, where liaison offices are located in Geneva and Vienna. Besides the host institution’s financial coverage, Acuns also pays for its costs through membership fees and grants from the likes of the Ford Foundation.

From the start, Acuns has worked to link academics researching the UN with practitioners inside the UN. This has been done by encouraging scholars to study and teach on UN issues; supporting young students in their studies; and inviting UN officials and diplomats to Acuns activities.

Paulo Filgueiras/UN Photo

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon conversing with Jean Ping, left, chairman of the African Union; and Abdel-Elah Mohamed Al-Khatib (back to camera), the special envoy to Libya, and Lynn Pascoe (left, back to camera), UN under secretary-general for political affairs. They were recently flying from Qatar to Cairo for an international conference on Libya organized by the Arab League.

The idea has been so productive that Acuns now has about 600 individual members in more than 50 countries; some 60 institutions are members, too. Besides its traditional stronghold in the U.S. and Canada (together, 45 percent of Acuns members), it has solid bases in Europe (37 percent); above all, in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (each about 7 percent) as well as in Britain (4 percent). It also has members in East Asia and the Pacific (6 percent); above all, in Japan (5 percent).

About 60 percent of members are academics; while 11 percent are students and 19 percent, practitioners.

One of Acuns’s most important projects has been on UN reform. In 2005, for example, it gathered, in cooperation with the Centre for International Governance Innovation and Wilfrid Laurier University, practitioners, leading academics, civil society representatives and UN officials in Waterloo to tackle the matter.

In addition, its regular events include an annual meeting focused on UN and international issues and an annual summer workshop for young scholars and professionals, organized with the American Society of International Law. The workshop in Geneva last year dealt with civil-military relations in peace missions. Acuns also has a dissertation award program and a peer-reviewed journal, Global Governance, about the UN and international organizations in general.

Moreover, Acuns is invited by UN officials to provide commentaries on such outputs as General Assembly resolutions.