GLOBALIZATION, LAW & JUSTICE WORKSHOP SERIES
presents
Naresh Singh
Director General for Governance and Social Development
Policy Branch
Canadian International Development Agency
Making Globalisation Inclusive by Making the Law Work for Everyone
Thursday, November 26, 2009
4:10 - 6:00 PM
Solarium (room FA2) - Falconer Hall
84 Queen's Park
This presentation will go beyond the usual debates about the pros and cons of globalisation and look instead at how to give the world's poor and excluded a better chance at improving their livelihoods. About 4 billion people on the planet are currently unable to use the law to create new economic opportunity to protect their assets. While most of them survivie in the informal or extra legal sectors of their economies and may even benefit from opportunities created by globalisation, their livelihoods remain marginal and unsustainable.
The case will be made for making these 4 billion people effective shareholders in the global economy, rather than mere clients seeking public goods and services from governments and international organisations. Arguments will be presented at the nexus of human rights and markets and will include concrete recommendations for action in the areas of property, labour and business law and over all access to justice and the rule of law.
Dr. Naresh Singh is currently Acting Vice-President of the Canadian Partnership Branch, CIDA. He was Executive Director of the U.N. Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor from March 2006 to July 2008, co-chaired by Madeleine Albright and Hernando de Soto and hosted by UNDP.
Naresh has had a distinguished career in international development that has included work in more than 40 countries. Before joining the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, he served as Director General of Governance and Social Development at CIDA. From 1996 to 2001, he worked at the U.N.D.P. as Principal Adviser on Poverty and Sustainable Lilvelihoods. This position followed his three-year tenure as the Director of the Poverty and Empowerment Program at the International Institute for Sustainable Development in Winnipeg, and several years as Executive Director of the Caribbean Environmental Health Institute.
Naresh holds an MSc. from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute in New Delhi and a PhD from the University of the West Indies in Jamaica. He is author of over 100 contributions (journal articles, book chapters and books) on governance, poverty and sustainable livelihoods (google Naresh Singh or visit nareshsingh.ca). He is currently an Adjuct Professor at Boston University, School of Public Health. Naresh was also a Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Global Equity Initiative, the Canada Trust visiting professor at the University of Waterloo, visiting scholar in international development at McGill University, and a visiting fellow at the University of Guelph.
Outside of academic, Naresh has advised several organizations, includig the Commonwealth Secretariat; the Pan American Health Organization; and the Foundation of International Environment Law and Development.
For more workshop information, please contact Nadia Gulezko at n.gulezko@utoronto.ca
