Implementing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): Challenges and Prospects- Dr David Malone

Speaker: David Malone

Chair: Prof Mats Berdal

Dr David Malone joined the United Nations University (UNU) as Rector and Under-Secretary General on 1 March 2013. He was reappointed for a second term as UNU Rector (2018–2023) in 2017. Prior to joining the UNU, Dr Malone served (2008–2013) as President of Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a funding agency supporting policy-relevant research in the developing world.    

Dr Malone had earlier served as Canada’s Representative to the UN Economic and Social Council and as Ambassador to the United Nations (1990–1994); as Director General of the Policy, International Organizations and Global Issues Bureaus within Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT, 1994–1998); and as President of the International Peace Academy (now International Peace Institute), a New York-based independent research and policy development institution (1998–2004). He oversaw Canada’s economic and multilateral diplomacy within DFAIT (2004–2006) and served as Canada’s High Commissioner to India and non-resident Ambassador to Bhutan and Nepal (2006–2008).

He has been a Guest Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, and an Adjunct Professor at the New York University School of Law, where he is currently a Senior Fellow.

He holds a degree from l’École des Hautes Études Commerciales (Montreal); studied at the American University of Cairo; holds an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; and earned a DPhil in International Relations from Oxford University.

Dr Malone has published extensively, in both academic and lighter veins. His books include The UN Security Council in the 21st Century (as co-editor; 2015, Lynne Rienner Publishers) and the second edition of Law and Practice of the United Nations (co-authored graduate textbook; 2016; Oxford University Press). More recent publications include (with Simon Chesterman and Santiago Villalpando) The Oxford Handbook of UN Treaties (2019) and, with, Benedict Kingsbury and Atsushi Sunami, Mega-regulation Contested: Global Economic Ordering after TPP (OUP, 2019).  Books under way include The Oxford Handbook of Higher Education in Asia (with Lily Kong and Devesh Kapur), as well the The UN and its Discontents, a monograph, both also with Oxford University Press. He co-edited Greed and Grievance – Economic Agendas in Civil Wars (Lynne Rienner, 2000) with Mats Berdal.