On June 5, 2008, the working group met for an additional meeting at the DIE to address the futurel direction of the group.

We discussed the following issues:
   * founding of the UNSA / informal character of the working group
   * future projects and activities
   * membership / engagement
   * UN Studies Portal

1. Founding of the UNSA

The UN Studies Association was founded on June 3, 2008 at the Em Höttche in Bonn, with 12 founding members attending.

A copy of the Charter (in German) can be downloaded here (coming soon).

In our discussion we clarified our status and understanding:

We will remain an informal working group in close association with ACUNS, regardless of our new legal status (a non-profit under German). The change of status and name are considered necessary for mere outreach purposes - to apply for funds, or to better advertise our work.

We are thus not aiming for setting up a (or better: yet another) formal organization with full-time staff but depend on the engagement of our members. Our working group will closely cooperate with all organizations who work on UN Studies issues.

In fact, it is our aim to better connect all parties interested in UN Studies, primarily by means of our wiki portal; furthermore, we offer a collaboration forum for all those who wish to actively contribute to develop a full-fledged concept of UN Studies to the benefit of all.

2. Future projects

•    Online seminars on UN public management
•    60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
•    Workshop on teaching techniques / new media and UN Studies
•    Journal of International Organization Studies - see ProjectJIOS
•    Developing a concept of UN Studies incl. teaching tools / follow-up of our Seminar

3. Membership / engagement

We further clarified the role of our membership. Members will run their own projects, the total of which will be orchestrated by Julia and Henrike. As a consequence we decided to not seek any membership fees; otherwise, we would act against the nature and spirit of our working group.

4. Wiki Portal

The meeting ended with a brief introduction to our wiki UN Studies Portal. We encouraged all members to work with this portal, first of all, by contributing to the results of the seminar on UN Research and Teaching