Newsday Reporter
UNIVERSITY of the West Indies (UWI) vice-chancellor Prof Sir Hilary Beckles has been appointed chairman/chancellor of the UN College.
In a news birth on January 7, UWI stated he used to be unanimously appointed by the UN College at the sitting of its governance council on December 7, 2024, in Tokyo, Japan.
“The UN College is a worldwide academy, headquartered in Tokyo, with research and instructing institutes in extra than one worldwide locations. It is an tutorial and innovation state tank and research arm for the arena neighborhood,” the birth stated.
“Noting that Sir Hilary has established a worldwide reputation as a strategic planner in larger education, revered student, and view leader in pattern thinking, the council expressed its keenness to work beneath his chairmanship as the college enters its fiftieth anniversary this year.”
The jam of chairman/chancellor is honorary. Its mandate is to facilitate the management of the rector/vice-chancellor of the college, and to book the council “in a formula that sustains the conceitedness of world and internal stakeholders, primarily the management of the UN, college participants and managers, personal sector investors, and college students.”
Sir Hilary has had a long and senior role in the affairs of the UN, the birth stated.
He has served in a lot of capacities, amongst them as Consultant to the annual UN Vogue Document on Latin The US and the Caribbean; committees on the global intention forward for larger education; vp and historian to UNESCO’s flagship initiative, the Slave Routes Challenge; and fair recently as joint editor of Volume 9 of the UNESCO’s Now not original Historical past of Africa sequence.
He has twice addressed the UN Now not original Meeting, first in enhance of the global neighborhood’s declaration of 2015-2024 as the International Decade for Of us of African Descent; and secondly on matters of reparatory justice in a multi-polar political and financial world.
Sir Hilary has additionally addressed the UN Security Council, beneath the presidency of St Vincent and the Grenadines Top Minister Dr Ralph Gonsalves, fair about global peace in the deepening digitised North-South dDivide.
No longer too long previously, the UN Tutorial Affect Committee voted UWI the global hub for Sustainable Vogue Intention 13: Local weather Action (SDG 13) ensuing from Sir Hilary’s lead in the institution of UWI’s International Faculty for Vogue Justice in 2024, aimed at handing over on-line postgraduate stage programmes on the SDGs.
He had earlier served as special adviser to UN peculiar secretary Ban Ki-Moon on sustainable pattern, to boot to recent peculiar secretary Antonio Guterres.
In accepting the appointment, Sir Hilary thanked participants of College Council, representatives of the UN and various organisations, for his or her expression of self belief. He assured them that as the college enters its fiftieth year beneath the management of its esteemed vice-chancellor, and the guidance of council, this would possibly occasionally proceed to upward thrust as one among the finest global universities.
He neatly-known that his appointment is a signal honour for UWI, whose reputation and global connectivity will be enhanced to boot to the Caribbean, the Hemisphere and in specific, emerging communities in the World South.
