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TAS Advisory Committee

IISD and IUCN have gathered a group of international experts in trade issues, aid policy and security issues to help advise and direct the research program. Led by Dr. Lloyd Axworthy, President of the University of Winnipeg and former Minister of Foreign Affairs for the Government of Canada the advisory committee contains three Nobel Prize nominees or their representatives: Dr. Axworthy, Partnership Africa Canada, and Global Witness. More information can be found about each of the members of the committee by clicking on their name below.

• Lloyd Axworthy (chair)
• Leiv Lunde
• Christian Friis Bach
• Ian Smillie
• Syed Mansoob Murshed
• Valerie de Campos Mello
• Mark Beaumont Taylor
• Gavin Hayman
• Georg Frerks
• Duncan Brack

• Lloyd Axworthy is President and Vice Chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. Formerly Director and CEO of the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia and Canada's Foreign Minister from 1995 to 2000, Lloyd Axworthy's political career spanned 27 years, six of which he served in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly and 21 in the Federal Parliament. He held several Cabinet positions, notably Minister of Employment and Immigration, Minister Responsible for the Status of Women, Minister of Transport, Minister of Human Resources Development, Minister of Western Economic Diversification and Minister of Foreign Affairs.

  In the Foreign Affairs portfolio, Dr. Axworthy became internationally known for his advancement of the human security concept, in particular, the Ottawa Treaty—a landmark global treaty banning anti-personnel landmines. For his leadership on landmines, he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. For his efforts in establishing the International Criminal Court and the Protocol on child soldiers, he received the North-South Institute's Peace Award.

  Since leaving public life in the fall of 2000, Dr. Axworthy has been the recipient of several prestigious awards and honours. The Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation presented him with the Senator Patrick J. Leahy Award in recognition of his leadership in the global effort to outlaw landmines and the use of children as soldiers and to bring war criminals to justice. Princeton University awarded him the Madison Medal for his record of outstanding public service and he received the CARE International Humanitarian Award. He was elected Honourary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has been named to the Order of Manitoba and to the Order of Canada.

  He has received honourary doctorates from Queen's university, Lakehead University, University of Victoria, University of Denver, Niagara University, University of Winnipeg, Dalhousie University, University of Manitoba and McMaster University.

  Dr. Axworthy is a Board member of the MacArthur Foundation, Human Rights Watch—where he chairs the Advisory Board for Americas Watch, Lester B. Pearson College, University of the Arctic, the Pacific Council on International Policy, on the Port of Churchill Advisory Board as well as on the Advisory Board of the Ethical Globalization Initiative.

  He graduated in 1961 with a B.A. from United College (now the University of Winnipeg), obtained his M.A. in Political Science from Princeton University in 1963, subsequently earning a PhD from Princeton in 1972.

  Lloyd Axworthy remains involved in international matters and lectures widely in Canada, the U.S. and abroad. His book "Navigating a New World – Canada's Global Future," Knopf Canada, was published in the Fall of 2003.

  In February 2004, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan appointed Lloyd Axworthy as his special envoy for Ethiopia-Eritrea to assist in implementing a peace agreement between the East African countries.

• Leiv Lunde is political scientist with broad experience in research, policy analysis and consulting/project management in areas such as environmental policy, climate change, development cooperation, humanitarian policy and conflict resolution, human rights, corporate social responsibility, international trade policy, public sector reform and private/public interfaces and partnerships. Lunde has a strong international profile with substantial experience from / competence on United Nations organizations, the World Bank and regional development banks as well as a number of governments, companies and NGOs.

  Countries of work experience include China, Sri Lanka and the Palestinian areas. Two and a half years in politics (1997-2000; as state secretary [deputy minister] for International Development and Human Rights in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs), has provided valuable new inputs, angles and networks to Lunde's work for ECON in a wide range of policy areas, including those mentioned above.

• Christian Friis Bach works as an author, lecturer, consultant and journalist. He is on leave from a position as Associate Professor in International Economics/Development Economics at the Royal Veterinary and Agricultural University. He holds a M.Sc. in Agronomy from the same university, with the main emphasis in chemistry. In 1996 he took a PhD in International Economics. Moreover, he holds a supplementary degree in Journalism from the Danish School of Journalism.

  He has worked as a journalist at the Danish Broadcasting Corporation; at the International Trade Division of the World Bank; the Institute of Economics, University of Copenhagen; the Danish Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Economics; and as consultant for the World Bank, the Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the EU, the UNDP and others. For several years he acted as instructor at the annual course in global general equilibrium models held by the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP), USA.

  In his spare time Christian Friis Bach has been active in a number of Non-Governmental Organizations, such as Amnesty International, Third World Import and Butik Salam. In 1993-94 he took the initiative to establish a Fair Trade organization in Denmark (Max Havelaar) and received Ford's Initiative Prize. From 1997 to 2001 he was chairman of MS-Denmark (Danish Association for International Cooperation). He has travelled to a number of developing countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

  He is a member of the central board in the Social-Liberal Party, board member of the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Member of the Scientific Committee, WWF Denmark.

  Christian Friis Bach was born in 1966. He is married, has three children and lives on a small farm with 33 hectares close to Copenhagen.

• Ian Smillie is an Ottawa-based development consultant and writer. He has lived and worked in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Bangladesh. He was a founder of the Canadian development organization, Inter Pares, and was Executive Director of CUSO from 1979 to 1983. He is an associate of the Humanitarianism and War Project at Tufts University in Boston and taught a graduate course on NGOs at Tulane University in New Orleans from 1998 to 2001. During 2000 he served on a UN Security Council Panel investigating the links between illicit weapons and the diamond trade in Sierra Leone. His latest books are Patronage or Partnership: Local Capacity Building in Humanitarian Crises (Kumarian, 2001); Managing for Change: Leadership, Strategy and Management in Asian NGOs (with John Hailey, London, 2001) and The Charity of Nations: Humanitarian Action in a Calculating World (with Larry Minear, Kumarian, 2004). Ian Smillie serves as Research Coordinator on Partnership Africa Canada's "Diamonds and Human Security Project" and is an NGO participant in the intergovernmental "Kimberley Process" which is developing a global certification system for rough diamonds.

• Syed Mansoob Murshed is a Bangladeshi and British national with B.Sc.(Econ), Economics, London School of Economics (University of London), 1979; M.Sc.(Econ), Economics, London School of Economics 1980; Graduate Studies at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 1981-3; and PhD at the University of Birmingham, England, 1987. Thesis title: "Analytical Models of North-South Interaction."

  His research activities can be best described under the following headings: (A) Development Economics including the Economics of Transition including: (1) Economics of Conflict; (2) Macroeconomics in Developing Countries; (3) Globalization; and, (4) Economics of the Transition in Central and Eastern Europe; (B) International Trade and Trade Policy including: (1) Theoretical work on Trade Policy and (2) Empirical work on Intra-Industry Trade; and, (C) Macroeconomics including: (1) Macroeconomic Interaction between the North and the South; (2) Open Economy Macroeconomics; and, (3) Stabilisation Policies in Small Open Economies with Open Product & Labour Markets.

  Since October 2004 has been half-time at the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands and half time Professor of International Economics at the Birmingham Business School, University of Birmingham, U.K.

• Valerie de Campos Mello is Special Assistant to the Assistant-Secretary-General for Political Affairs at the United Nations. Her responsibilities include providing political advice on all Asian and Middle Eastern affairs, as well as policy work on the issues of conflict prevention, peace-building and democracy. Her current research interests lie at the intersection between development and peace and security, in particular at the political economy of conflicts and at the UN's role in the "structural prevention" of conflicts. She is currently coordinating the UN Informal Group on the Political Economy of Armed Conflicts. Before joining the United Nations, she was assistant professor of International Relations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Dr. de Campos Mello holds a PhD in International Relations from the European University Institute (EUI, Florence, Italy), a Masters in International Relations from the University of Paris I, Sorbonne and a BA in Economics from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

• Mark Beaumont Taylor is the Deputy Managing Director of the Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies (Fafo AIS), Oslo. Since joining Fafo in 1997, Mark has been working on issues related to international responses to conflict, including the reform of UN peace operations, war economies, peace-building, human rights and conflict resolution initiatives in Haiti, the Balkans and the Middle East. Between July 1998 and November 2002, he was Program Director of Fafo's Program for International Cooperation and Conflict Resolution, in which capacity he ran the Peace Implementation Network. He is currently editor of the Economies of Conflict series of reports (published by Fafo AIS) examining private sector activity in armed conflict, and will publish a book entitled Conflict Trade (Pluto Press) in 2005.

  Mark lived in the West Bank and Gaza Strip between 1989 and 1995, where he helped coordinate the Human Rights Action Project at Birzeit University (1989 - 1992), and carried out security and economic analysis for UNRWA in Gaza (1993 - 1994). Mark was Executive Officer for Liaison and Special Projects for the UN Special Co-ordinator (1994-1995) in which position he acted as special assistant to the UN Special Co-ordinator, Terje Rød-Larsen. In addition, he has carried out human rights and investigations in the Middle East for Human Rights Watch and economic and security analysis for other non-governmental organizations. Mark has B.A. (honours) from McGill University, Montreal and a LL.M. (cum laude) in Public International Law from Leiden University, The Netherlands.

• Gavin Hayman is a researcher and campaigner at Global Witness based in London, U.K. He has contributed substantially to Global Witness' work on oil, gas and mining and the linkages between natural resources and conflict. He previously worked at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London.

• Georg Frerks is the Head of the Conflict Research Unit at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, Clingendael, at The Hague. He is also Professor of Disaster Studies at Wageningen University and Professor of Conflict Prevention and Conflict Management at Utrecht University. He specializes in development-related conflict and emergencies in developing countries.

• Duncan Brack is an Associate Fellow of the Sustainable Development Programme at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London in the U.K. The program is one of the world's leading interdisciplinary research centres for a wide range of major international environmental and energy policy issues. From 1998 to 2003, he was Head of the Program, and from 1995 to 1998 a Senior Research Fellow at RIIA.

  He now works on international environmental crime, particularly illegal logging, and trade and environment issues, in which he has published a range of papers and organized a series of conferences and workshops.

  Most recent publications include: Multilateral Environmental Agreements and the WTO (with Kevin Gray, 2003); Controlling Imports of Illegal Timber: Options for Europe (with Chantal Marijnissen and Saskia Ozinga, 2002); Monitoring of International Trade and Control of Illegal Trade in ozone-Depleting Substances (study for UNEP, 2002); and International Environmental Crime: The Nature and Control of Environmental Black Markets (with Gavin Hayman, 2002).

  He is a member of the Green Globe Network, an advisory body on international environmental policy to the U.K. Foreign Office and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and has been a specialist adviser to the House of Commons Environment Select Committee and Environmental Audit Committee.

  Duncan Brack graduated in politics and economics from Oxford University, and gained an M.Sc. in politics and administration from Birkbeck College, London. Before joining the RIIA, he worked in British politics, and from 1988 to 1994 held the post of Policy Director for the Liberal Democrats.

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