About

Bimal Ghosh has a long record of activities running concurrently between academia and international organizations. He is Emeritus Professor at Colombia’s Graduate School of Public Administration, and a Senior Fellow (global migration) at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva as well as at the Institute of International Policy and Diplomacy, University of Tadeo Lozano, Bogotá.

Author of more than a dozen books and numerous reports and newspaper columns, he teaches in a visiting capacity subjects related to globalization, including migration, trade and development, and human rights and security in various European universities. Previously, he was Professor of Economics in City College, Calcutta University, and was a visiting scholar/fellow at the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., the Institute of Development Studies in Sussex, England and the Harvard Institute for International Development. He has served as a referee for several university presses (e.g. Oxford and Cornell) and development agencies (e.g. DFID, UK) and is a frequent speaker at conferences sponsored by governments, academia and civil society.

He now often also serves as a senior consultant /external collaborator to the United Nations, ILO, IOM the Council of Europe and various global commissions and conferences. He is on the Advisory Board of IOM and of several NGOS, including the Hague Process on Refugees and Migration, the Network on Migration Research on Africa, Lagos, and the Global Migration Policy Associates in Geneva.

Previously a senior director in the United Nations system, he held positions, among others, as coordinator of UN interagency secretariat for development co-operation, UNDP resident director, and ILO director of technical cooperation and development.He has served as leader of a UNDP/World Bank mission on foreign direct investment in Asia; as director of a global project on migration management (NIROMP), as a member of the UNHRC intergovernmental group of experts on migrants human rights (1998-99).

He also served as a senior consultant at the Ministerial Conference on East-West Migration (Vienna, 1991, and as the scientific coordinator of the West African Ministerial conference on migration and development (Dakar, 2000). He was secretary general of the Latin American conference on the role of agricultural organizations in economic and social development (Santiago, Chile, 1969); and of the technical conference on sedentarization of nomads in the Sahel (Niamey, 1968). Leading an inter-agency UN mission in the then Congo (Leopoldville and Burundi (1963 he pioneered the UN/UNHCR programme on refugee integration and development. He coordinated Colombia’s first national plan of development(technical) assistance (1971-75), hailed as a model programme at the UNDP Governing Council

A recipient of various academic awards and prestigious national honours for his contribution to development and international cooperation, Bimal has lived and worked in all the major regions of the world and speaks English, French, Spanish and several Asian languages.