Speakers
Globalization and Law: Theory and Practice
Joint Seminar by the Warwick Law School and the
Third World Network
Martin Khor
Martin Khor is the Director of the Third World Network (TWN) and has led TWN since its inception in 1984. He was instrumental in forming the international network of groups and individuals who form the cornerstone of TWN. A former economist and university lecturer in Malaysia, Khor has written extensively on matters relating to trade, development, north-south relations, the international financial architecture, the environment and ecology, agriculture, intellectual property rights and threats to biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Among his most recent publications are: Globalization and the South: Some Critical Issues
, The WTO, the Post-Doha Agenda and the Future of the Trade System, and Intellectual Property Rights, TRIPS and Biodiversity.
Khor not only serves as advisor and consultant to several United Nations agencies and national and international bodies and public policymakers, he is also a respected and articulate campaigner, advocate and lobbyist on many issues pertaining to globalization, development and the protection of human rights.
Asiaweek biography of Martin Khor
Bhagirath Lal Das
A former Indian ambassador to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), and also former Director of the International Trade Programme at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Bhagirath Das now serves as consultant to TWN.
Das is the foremost authority on trade negotiations for developing countries and is the institutional memory for many international trade agreements, including the GATT and the international commodity agreements. He has also written extensively on the area of trade negotiations and his views are widely respected by current trade negotiators. His books include the seminal The World Trade Organisation: A Guide to the Framework of International Trade, An Introduction to the WTO Agreements, and The WTO Agreements: Deficiencies, Imbalances and Required Changes. Das’ most recent papers – Some Suggestions for Modalities in the Agriculture Negotiations and
The New Work Programme of the WTO - have focused on the new round of trade talks at the WTO and suggestions for negotiating strategies for the onerous work programme placed on developing countries.
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz
Tauli-Corpuz is Director of the Tebtebba Foundation (the Indigenous Peoples’ Centre for Policy Research and Education) based in Baguio City, Philippines. Tebtebba has served to build the capacity of indigenous peoples worldwide to articulate their rights and conduct their own analysis into issues affecting indigenous communities.
Tauli-Corpuz is known for her active in capacity building programmes in her home country and as an independent monitor at the international arena on issues affecting indigenous peoples. Tauli-Corpuz was instrumental in mobilising support and lobbying for the inclusion of a sentence ‘We reaffirm the vital role of indigenous peoples in sustainable development’ at the recent World Summit on Sustainable Development, a pivotal recognition of the rights and contribution of indigenous societies worldwide. Tauli-Corpuz has also worked on issues relating to gender. The TWN has published her book, Globalization and its Impact on Indigenous Women: The Philippine Experience.
Cecilia Oh
Cecilia Oh is Third World Network’s Legal Advisor and head of the Geneva office. A lawyer by training, Oh has worked on environmental and trade issues with TWN for four years. Prior to TWN, she was working with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Malaysia. Oh has been actively involved in tracking the WTO negotiations on a daily basis and in mobilising and coordinating civil society action in tandem with developments at the WTO and other multilateral institutions.
An expert on the Agreement on Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and its relationship to public health, Cecilia coordinated TWN’s TRIPS Action Network (TAN), alongside Oxfam International and Medicins Sans Frontiers. She is an active participant in a successful campaign by civil society groups, legal experts, developing country governments and the media to demand for universal access to medicines, in particular the anti-retroviral drugs necessary to treat HIV and AIDS, in the wake of the threat posed by the TRIPS Agreement.
Oh has also been following developments at the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and has worked on lobbying for an international protocol on Biosafety for the regulation of genetically- modified organisms.
Goh Chien Yen
Goh, also a lawyer by training, joined the Third World Network a year and a half ago, after working with a regional television news programme in Singapore for two years. Goh monitors the international financial institutions, and developments in international finance for the Third World Network, his primary interests being the resolution of the global debt crisis and the current moves to work towards a sovereign debt restructuring mechanism (akin to bankcruptcy proceedings) for indebted middle-income countries.
Goh has also worked on issues relating to human rights and sustainable development. His Masters thesis was on human rights and the right to development. Goh has particpated in various international processes, most notably this year, in the recently concluded World Summit on Sustianable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa and the Financing for Development Conference in Monterrey, Mexico in March.
Celine Tan
Celine joined the Third World Network after graduating from Warwick Law School with an LLM in Law in Development in January this year. During her stint with TWN, she has worked on issues relating to trade and the international financial institutions. Her recent paper, Paving the Yellow Brick Road: The World Bank’s Foray into Trade Capacity Building and the WTO Agenda, A Critique, published by TWN, examines how trade policy coherence between the World Bank and the World Trade Organisation, can undermine the negotiating positions of developing countries and undermine their autonomy in arriving at trade policy decisions.
Celine is currently pursuing her PhD at Warwick and has assumed principal responsibilities for the organization of the Workshop.