Established in 1963, UNRISD was the inspiration of two intellectual giants of the United Nations: Nobel Laureates Jan Tinbergen and Gunnar Myrdal. These leading thinkers understood that neglect of social questions in development thinking and practice would compromise the “development project” itself. They also recognized the importance of an independent research function at the heart of the UN, separate from its advisory and operational work, but able to feed directly into “action programmes of the United Nations system”.
