In his 1969 Annual Report to the United Nation General Assembly, UN Secretary-General U Thant proposed the creation of a “United Nations University, truly international in character and devoted to the Charter objectives of peace and progress”.

The General Assembly ordered a feasibility study and appointed a panel of experts to work closely with UNESCO in examining the potential for building such an institution. The panel submitted a report to the UN Economic and Social Council in September 1972, and in December 1972 the General Assembly adopted the decision to establish the United Nations University (UNU), thereby formally establishing the world’s first international university. A Founding Committee then prepared a draft University Charter and Resolution, both of which were approved by the General Assembly in December 1973.

The first UNU Council and the University’s first Rector, Dr. James M. Hester, were appointed in 1974, and on 20 January 1975 a formal inauguration ceremony for the University was held at its temporary headquarters building in Tokyo. It was there that UNU’s first priority programme areas — world hunger, natural resources, and human and social development — were framed. These priority areas have been refined and built upon over the ensuing three-plus decades to form the five thematic clusters that the UNU pursues today:

1. Peace, Security and Human Rights
2. Development Governance
3. Population and Health
4. Global Change and Sustainable Development
5. Science, Technology and Society.

Since official commencement of its academic activities in 1975, UNU has worked to live up to its role as an international university by expanding partnerships with academic institutions around the world. During the tenure of the University’s second Rector, Dr. Soedjatmoko, The first UNU research and training institute — UNU-WIDER — was established in Helsinki, Finland, in March 1985. Since then, UNU has grown to encompass 15 institutes and programmes in 12 countries around the world, as well as some 20 UNU Associated Institutions (as of mid-2011).

Most recently, Rector Konrad Osterwalder has taken the necessary steps (including amendement of the UNU Charter) to provide the University with the ability to confer postgraduate degrees. The first of these degree programmes was launched by UNU-ISP in September 2010. Rector Osterwalder also founded the “Twin Institutes” initiative, under which each of the University’s institutes will possess at least two (and possibly up to four) locations: one in a developing country and one in a developed country.

UNU will continue to extend the scope of its global institutional network and build on its list of postgraduate programmes in order to recruit  leading academics and graduate students equipped with a truly international mindset and the knowledge necessary to address the pressing issues currently faced by the international community.