Professor Tommy KOH

Professor Tommy KOH

Ambassador-at-Large

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Tommy KOH is currently an Ambassador-At-Large, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and an Emeritus Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is the Chairman of the International Advisory Panel of the Centre for International Law at the NUS and Special Adviser of the Institute of Policy Studies.

He had served as Dean of the Faculty of Law of NUS, Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, Ambassador to the United States of America, High Commissioner to Canada and Ambassador to Mexico. He was President of the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea. He was also the Chairman of the Preparatory Committee for and the Main Committee of the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit). He was the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy to Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He was the founding Chairman of the National Arts Council, founding Executive Director of the Asia-Europe Foundation and former Chairman of the National Heritage Board. He had served as a director of DBS bank and Singtel and on the International Advisory Board of Toyota. He was Singapore’s Chief Negotiator in negotiating an agreement to establish diplomatic relations between Singapore and China. He was also Singapore’s Chief Negotiator for the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement. He acted as Singapore’s Agent in two legal disputes with Malaysia. He has chaired two dispute panels for the WTO. He was the founding Rector of the Tembusu College and founding Chairman of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum at NUS.

Professor Koh had served as the founding co-chair of the India-Singapore Strategic Dialogue, the China-Singapore Forum and the Japan-Singapore Symposium.

Professor Koh has received awards from the Governments of Singapore, Chile, Finland, France, Japan, Netherlands, Spain and the United States. Professor Koh received the Champion of the Earth Award from UNEP and the inaugural President’s Award for the Environment from Singapore. He was conferred with honorary doctoral degrees in law by Yale and Monash Universities. Harvard University conferred on him the Great Negotiator Award in 2014.

Professor Koh is the author or editor of 25 books. The 25th book is entitled, Peace With Nature, co-edited with Lye Lin Heng and Shawn Lum.

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