Prof Tommy Koh is Ambassador-At-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Chairman of the Governing Board of the Centre for International Law and Rector of Tembusu College at the National University of Singapore. He is the Co-Chairman of the China-Singapore Forum, the India-Singapore Strategic Dialogue and the Japan-Singapore Symposium.
He was Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York for 13 years. He was Ambassador to the United States of America for 6 years. He was the Dean of the Faculty of Law of NUS. He was also the President of the Third UN Conference on the Law of the Sea. He chaired the Preparatory Committee for and the Main Committee at the Earth Summit. He had served as the UN Secretary–General’s Special Envoy to Russia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. He was also Singapore’s Chief Negotiator for the USA–Singapore Free Trade Agreement. He has chaired two dispute panels for the WTO. In 1984, Yale University conferred on him an honorary degree of doctor of law. Prof Koh received the Elizabeth Haub Prize for Environmental Law in 1996 and was made a Champion of the Earth by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in 2006. He also received the Great Negotiator Award 2014 from HarvardUniversity on 10 April 2014.