Africa Institute for Research in Economics and Social Sciences is organizing a seminar on Thursday, September 14th at 12:30 p.m on ''The 'third' United Nations: How a knowledge ecology helps the UN think". 

Our guest speaker for this event is Tatiana Carayannis, director of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF) and Understanding Violent Conflict (UVC) program of the Social Science Research Council SSRC.

ABSTRACT

The Third UN is the ecology of supportive non-state actors-intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for-profit private sector, and the media-that interacts with the intergovernmental machinery of the First UN (member states) and the Second UN (staff members of international secretariats) to formulate and refine ideas and decision-making at key junctures in policy processes. Some advocate for particular ideas, others help analyze or operationalize their testing and implementation; many thus help the UN 'think'. While think tanks, knowledge brokers, and epistemic communities are phenomena that have entered both the academic and policy lexicons, their intellectual role remains marginal to analyses of such intergovernmental organizations as the United Nations. This talk, based on the author’s recent book published with Oxford University Press, will discuss the history and importance of the Third UN in shaping global governance and its role in shaping our changing world order.