Tommy Koh named Great Negotiator Award winner

SINGAPORE - Professor Tommy Koh, ambassador-at-large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has been named the recipient of the 2014 Great Negotiator Award.

He will be honoured at a series of public events at Harvard University on April 10 next year.

The award is given out by the Program on Negotiation (PON), an inter-university consortium comprising Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts University and the Future of Diplomacy Project at Harvard Kennedy School.

Prof Koh has been honoured for his distinguished career contributions to the fields of negotiation and dispute resolution, especially his leading role in challenging settings, including the Law of the Sea, the "Rio" Earth Summit, the ASEAN Charter, and the Singapore-US Free Trade Agreement.

Said Prof Koh: "I thank Harvard University for this great honour. I accept this award on behalf of all my colleagues who have been members of the various teams I have led, in both bilateral and multilateral negotiations."

Established by PON in 2000, the Great Negotiator Award recognises individuals whose lifetime achievements in the field of negotiation and dispute resolution have had a significant and lasting impact.

There was no recipient for the award this year, but previous winners of the award include former US secretary of state James Baker in 2012 and Martti Ahtisaari, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and former president of Finland, in 2010.

"In honouring Ambassador Koh, we have the unique opportunity to learn from one of the world's leaders in the practice of large-scale, multi-party conference diplomacy - a complex form of negotiation that will be increasingly needed to forge effective collective responses to a range of global problems, such as the environment, trade, public health, finance, development, national security, and terrorism," said Harvard Business School Professor James K Sebenius, vice-chair of PON and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Nicholas Burns, faculty director of the Future of Diplomacy Project.

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