The Nippon Foundation Stepping Up Partnership with United Nations in Nurturing Professionals to Tackle Ocean Issues (1)

Since its establishment in 1962, The Nippon Foundation has undertaken various human resource capacity-building programs in developing and developed countries.

To mention just a few, it has provided scholarships for advanced education of deaf and hard-of-hearing persons and those with visual impairment as well as for students at agricultural universities in Africa and elsewhere. We built schools to educate prosthetics and orthotics (P&O) professionals in Southeast Asian countries where many people have lost limbs after coming into contact with landmines used in internal conflicts. The Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA), a research and design organization we established at the University of Houston 35 years ago, has produced four astronauts.

But this blog focuses on the foundation’s partnership with the United Nations in nurturing professionals to tackle ocean and marine issues that are now recognized as one of the world’s most pressing challenges.

In a webinar on May 19, I agreed with U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs Miguel de Serpa Soares to redouble our efforts to cultivate professionals to address ocean issues. To date, 182 fellows from 82 countries have completed the training programs under our partnership with the U.N. I am proud to say that most of them are now back in their home countries, hard at work on finding solutions to the issues facing the oceans.

Our initiatives are administered primarily with the U.N. Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of the Sea (UNDOALOS) in New York, which serves as the secretariat for the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), and consist of the following four programs:
 

(A)  The United Nations-Nippon Foundation Fellowship

This fellowship provides advanced training and research opportunities in　the field of ocean affairs and the law of the sea and related disciplines, including marine science in support of policy and management frameworks, to government officials and other mid-level ocean professionals from developing states. It aims to provide the necessary knowledge and skills to assist developing states in formulating comprehensive ocean policies, and in implementing UNCLOS and related instruments. The program lasts nine months and is structured into two phases:

　1. Three months of training on ocean affairs and the law of the sea and research on an agreed topic at UNDOALOS.

　2. Six months at one of 48 participating academic institutions in 24 countries, where fellows are able to conduct supervised research and prepare a thesis on their topic.

(To be continued)