Wednesday, 14 July 2021
1 pm to 2:30 pm EDT

The seminar presentation can be viewed here.

Chair

Elliott Harris,
ASG DESA and Chief Economist, United Nations

UN DESA Presenters

Nazrul Islam
Hoi Wai Jackie Cheng
Martijn Kind
Yern Fai Lee
Kristinn Sv. Helgason

Discussants

H. E. Ambassador Mohan Pieris

Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations

Ambassador Mohan Pieris, President’s Counsel, has been serving as the Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the United Nations in New York since January 2021. Prior to his appointment, Ambassador Pieris held the positions of the Chief Justice, Attorney General, Senior Legal Advisor to the Cabinet, Legal Consultant to the Central Bank, and Legal Adviser to the Ministry of Defence of Sri Lanka.

As the Chief Justice, he was the Chairman of Council of Legal Education of Sri Lanka. Subsequent to his tenure as the Chief Justice, he engaged in academia, and has been teaching law as a visiting Professor in the national law universities in India, the Judges’ Training Schools and the leading private universities in India. He was also a lecturer at the Sir John Kotelawala Defence University in Sri Lanka.

In 2011, Ambassador Pieris also held the position of the Chairman of the Seylan Bank during its restructuring process.
Beginning in 1996, Ambassador Pieris practiced law in the Original and Appellate courts on both criminal and civil matters, as well as matters of public law and fundamental rights in the Court of Appeals and the in Supreme Court. He also served as the Deputy President of the Bar Association of Sri Lanka and was a member of the Sri Lankan Delegation to the Universal Periodic review at the eighth session of the Human Rights Council of the United Nation and was a regular member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the Human Rights Council for a number of years.

Between 1981 and 1996, he was assigned to the Attorney General’s Chambers which required the prosecution of cases island wide, on behalf of the state, in civil and criminal matters inclusive of matters of public law pertaining to judicial review, constitutional law and Fundamental Rights. He was also a member of the Ceasefire Monitoring Committee and the Special Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Corruption and Abuse of Power in Public Bodies.
He was also trained under the Commonwealth Programme for lawyers as a solicitor and was admitted as a solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales in 1978. He was admitted as an Attorney-at-law for the Supreme Court in Sri Lanka in June 1975.

Consequently, he attended several academic courses inclusive of privatization and management at the Gorge Washington University in the United States of America, in trial advocacy in Harvard Law School and in Economic Crisis in Jesus College, Cambridge.

As a member of the Attorney General’s Department, he was actively engaged in advising on matters pertaining to urban development and public administration.

Ephraim Nkonya

International Food Policy Research Institute

Dr. Ephraim Nkonya is a nonresident fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C. Ephraim. Ephraim earned his Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from Kansas State university. He has published widely in referred journals on issues related to natural resource management, poverty reduction, climate change and role of rural services on poverty reduction. In collaboration with scientists from around the world, Ephraim led a global study on the economics of land degradation (ELD), which aimed to measure the cost of inaction against land degradation and the benefit of taking against land degradation. A springer book on LED was published in 2016. Ephraim is a true East African – with parental heritage from Kenya and Uganda but born and raised in Tanzania. He grew up on a small farm in northern Tanzania, which inspired him to pursue his land management career.

Benjamin Davis

Director of Division on Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equality, FAO

Benjamin has extensive experience in social protection, social policies and agricultural economics. He previously served as Strategic Progrmme Leader, Rural Poverty Reduction and Deputy Director of the Agricultural Development Economics Division at FAO and he was team leader of the From Production to Protection (PtoP) project. He has also worked as Social Policy Advisor for the UNICEF Regional Office in Eastern and Southern Africa and as a Research and Post-Doctoral Fellow at IFPRI. He holds a PhD in Agricultural Economics and a Master’s in Public Policy from UC Berkeley.

Register and join here: bit.ly/HLPF_WSR2021
Livestreamed on Facebook @UNEconomicAnalysis

Previous Events

Wednesday, 23 June 2021
9 am to 11 am EDT

Chair

Elliott Harris,
ASG DESA and Chief Economist, United Nations

UN DESA Presenters

Nazrul Islam
Hoi Wai Jackie Cheng
Yern Fai Lee
Kristinn Sv. Helgason

Discussants

Sarah Cook

Institute for Global Development,
University of New South Wales, Australia

Sarah Cook is an Honorary Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Sydney where she was Inaugural Director of the Institute for Global Development (2018- 2020), and a Visiting Professor with the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at the University of Witwatersrand. Previously, she Director positions in the UN with UNICEF’s Office of Research-Innocenti in Florence (2015-2018), and the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) (2009-2015). From 1996- 2009, she was a Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, Sussex.

A development economist and China specialist, her research has focused primarily on China's social and economic transformations, including work on labour and migration, poverty, inequality, social policy and gender. Her engagement in China has spanned the period from the mid-1980s, including 5 years as the Ford Foundation’s Programme Officer in Beijing (2000-2005) where she led the Foundation’s initiatives on economics, governance and gender. Sarah received her PhD from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and her BA from Oxford University.

Ephraim Nkonya

International Food Policy Research Institute

Dr. Ephraim Nkonya is a nonresident fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington D.C. Ephraim. Ephraim earned his Ph.D. degrees in agricultural economics from Kansas State university. He has published widely in referred journals on issues related to natural resource management, poverty reduction, climate change and role of rural services on poverty reduction. In collaboration with scientists from around the world, Ephraim led a global study on the economics of land degradation (ELD), which aimed to measure the cost of inaction against land degradation and the benefit of taking against land degradation. A springer book on LED was published in 2016. Ephraim is a true East African – with parental heritage from Kenya and Uganda but born and raised in Tanzania. He grew up on a small farm in northern Tanzania, which inspired him to pursue his land management career.

Binayak Sen

Bangladesh Institute for Development Studies

Dr. Binayak Sen is a Research Director at the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies. He did his MA in Economics from the Moscow State University and his PhD in Economics from the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He has been a senior economist in the South Asia Region of the World Bank and a Visiting Research Fellow at the Research Administration Department of the World Bank. He has served as a consultant for the Asian Development Bank, UN-ESCAP, UNDP and the WHO. He has taught economic development courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels at North South University, BRAC University, Dhaka University and National University. Dr. Sen has a proven track record of expertise in the areas of poverty analysis, human development and governance. He has written and published extensively in these and related areas.

Leopoldo Tornarolli

Agrifood Economics Division, FAO

Leopoldo Tornarolli is a senior economist at Center of Distributive, Labor and Social Studies (CEDLAS), Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. Currently on break, he has also worked as senior economist on rural poverty analysis at the Agrifood Economics Division (ESA) of the Food and Agriculture Organization.

Ali Zafar

Independent Macroeconomist

Macroeconomist and private sector specialist with more than 15 years of experience working with the World Bank, the United Nations, and the African Development Bank in lending, analytical, and investment operations throughout Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Experienced advisor with a successful track record providing technical assistance and contributing to economic policy reforms. Co-authored a book on the rise of China – Tales from the Development Frontier (World Bank, 2013) and authored a recent book - The CFA Franc Zone: Economic Development and the Post-Covid Recovery (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) - proposing macroeconomic policy reform options to address development challenges in Francophone West and Central Africa.

Moderator
Marcelo LaFleur, UN DESA

Register and join here: bit.ly/WSR_RuralDevt
Livestreamed on Facebook @UNEconomicAnalysis

The full report can be accessed at bit.ly/wsr2021