UNITAR: a dynamic renaissance in the 1990s.

• Position: United Nations Institute for Training and Research

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...