About

I come from Sri Lanka – the resplendent island in the Indian Ocean.

I worked as a senior specialist with the International Labour Organization (ILO – a specialized agency of the United Nations) from 1985 to March 2010. My last major assignment was as a senior migration specialist in the ILO’s International Migration Programme based in Geneva following long spells as an employment specialist in the ILO Asian Regional Team for Employment Promotion (ILO-ARTEP), New Delhi and the East Asia Multidisciplinary Advisory Team (ILO-EASMAT), ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok. I also worked as a senior employment specialist with the ILO’s Decent Work Technical Support Team for South Asia, New Delhi, India,  from January to August 2011.

I have  undertaken and directed policy-oriented research on employment, poverty alleviation, labour market polices, and international labour migration, and provided advisory services and technical assistance to countries in Asia, Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, and the Middle East, on a wide range of related policy issues.

My special interests include globalization and labour migration, migration trends and policies in Asia, skilled migration and brain drain issues, irregular migration, rights of migrant workers, and migration statistics. I am a strong advocate of a rights-based approach to labour migration issues.

Before joining the ILO I worked as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Economics and Statistics, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka,  and served brief spells as a senior researcher in the People’s Bank of Sri Lanka,  and the Agrarian Research and Training Institute, Sri  Lanka.

I obtained my Bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and  Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Cambridge, UK.