Universities are the marketplace of ideas. The United Nations University lies at the interface of the interaction between ideas, international organizations and international public policy. In an information society and world, the comparative advantage of UNU lies in its identity as the custodian and manager of knowledge-based networks and coalitions that give it a global mandate and reach. The United Nations has the responsibility to protect international peace and promote human development. The UN Charter codifies best-practice state behavior.
Scientists have a duty to make their knowledge available for the betterment of humanity.
UNU has the mandate to link the two normally isolated worlds of scholarship and policy-making. The January 2000 conference held at the UNU in Tokyo was one item in the ongoing effort to fulfill that mandate. The Millennium Conference was organized to showcase new ideas and fresh thinking of relevance to the United Nations and, in a wider sense, to the challenges faced by humanity. The goal was to put all important issues on the table in order to set the scene for discussions and decisions in the millennium year, and to offer solutions that were creative, integrative and good examples of lateral thinking. Globalization refers both to process and outcome.