Global Negotiation Conference 2021
Hosted Online by the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich
6-9 July 2021
The eighth Global Negotiation Conference will take place online, hosted by ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, from the 6-9 July 2021. The topic of the conference is negotiating an international treaty on the role of business in upholding human rights. We are pleased to announce the following speakers will conduct workshops and presentations alongside members of the team.
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Vaira Vike-Freiberga
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Dr. Vaira Vike-Freiberga was President of Latvia (1999-2007), President of the World Leadership Alliance/Club de Madrid (2014-2019). Currently Co-chair of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center. She was Special Envoy on the United Nations reform and official candidate for UN Secretary General in 2006, Vice-chair of the Reflection group on the long-term future of Europe, and Chair of the High-level group on freedom and pluralism of media in the EU in 2011-12, as well as a member of two High-level groups on European security and defense in 2015 and of the Team of Advisors to UN ECOSOC on UN development in 2016.
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Michael Ambühl
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Michael Ambühl is a Professor of Negotiation and Conflict Management at the Department of Management, Technology, and Economics of ETH, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich and the Director of the Swiss School of Public Governance. Previously, Michael Ambühl spent over thirty years as a Swiss Diplomat where he served as State Secretary for Foreign Affairs and State Secretary in the Finance Ministry. Throughout his career, he was a member of the “Swiss-EU Bilateral I”- negotiation team, he led the negotiations of the “Swiss-EU Bilateral II”- agreements (including Schengen), he was facilitator of the Geneva Iran-P5+1 talks, and in the Armenia-Turkey Protocols, signed in Zurich in 2009. He also negotiated the Swiss-US UBS-deal, the Tax treaty Switzerland-UK & Austria, the Swiss-US FATCA Agreement and the Swiss-US Tax deal.
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Christine Kaufman is an international expert on business and human rights with over 20 years of experience working in various roles with business, governments, inter-governmental and civil society organisations. She is currently the Chair of the OECD Working Party on Responsible Business Conduct, the intergovernmental committee overseeing the implementation of the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, the comprehensive international framework for Responsible Business Conduct. She also chairs the Network of National Contact Points on Responsible Business Conduct, which represent the unique globally active grievance mechanism under the OECD Guidelines. Since 2002 she has been Professor of International, Constitutional and Administrative Law at the University of Zurich where she is also the founder and current President of the Centre of Human Rights Studies.
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Jerome Bellion-Jourdan
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Jerome Bellion-Jourdan is currently European Union Senior Policy Advisor at the Global Governance Centre, Graduate Institute Geneva. Jerome was previously the lead negotiator for the EU on Business and Human Rights in the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva for the nearly nine years. He has contributed to multi-stakeholder initiatives such as the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers’ Association, and the Mega-Sporting Events Platform leading to a new Centre for Sport and Human Rights. Jerome holds a Ph.D in Political Science of Sciences Po. Paris and sits on the Board of Directors of Sciences Po. Grenoble since 2017.
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Julie Garfieldt Kofoed
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Julie Garfieldt Kofoed is the Head of Human Rights at the UN Global Compact, the United Nations’ corporate sustainability initiative. In this capacity, she leads UN Global Compact’s engagement with businesses, governments, law firms and associations, civil society, and the UN system to support the implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights. Before taking up this position, Ms. Kofoed served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, most recently as the Senior Human Rights Policy Adviser with the Permanent Mission of Denmark to the United Nations in New York (2012 – 2019).Ms. Kofoed has held a number of positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark including Head of Section, EU Law Department, Center for Legal Services (2011-2012) and Human Rights Adviser and Attaché to the Permanent Missions of Denmark to the UN in both Geneva and New York (2010).
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Smadar Cohen-Chen is a senior lecturer (associate professor) in the Management Department, University of Sussex Business School. After receiving her PhD in social psychology from the University of Sheffield, Smadar held a postdoctoral position in the Dispute Resolution Research Center, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, followed by an assistant professor position in the Surrey Business School. Smadar research focuses the role of emotional experiences and expressions in promoting conflict resolution and cooperative negotiations. Smadar has been teaching negotiations, organizational psychology, and conflict resolution (postgraduate level) for over seven years.
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Véronique Fraser, Ph.D. is a Vice-Dean delegated for Strategic Development and a Law Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University de Sherbrooke (Canada). She teaches and has published work in areas of mixed modes dispute resolution, cross-cultural dispute resolution, negotiation, dispute prevention, and legal design. Professor Fraser is a lawyer called to the bars of the provinces of Québec (civil law) and Ontario (common law) in 2009, as well as an accredited mediator with the Quebec Institute for Mediation and Arbitration. She is the co-founder of the Institute for Negotiation Innovation, a non-for-profit corporation whose mission is to promote the development of innovative negotiation tools and mobilize knowledge derived from an international body of credible negotiation science in order to make them freely accessible.
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