Special Adviser, Office of the Director General
WTO

Mr. Harbinson was appointed as Special Adviser, Office of the Director-General, World Trade Organization in September 2005, on the assumption of office of Mr Pascal Lamy as WTO Director-General. Prior to that, since September 2002, he had served as Director, Office of the Director-General (Chief of Staff and Senior Adviser) to Dr. Supachai Panitchpakdi.

Before joining the WTO Secretariat, Mr Harbinson had long experience in a range of areas of government activity in Hong Kong dating from 1978, notably in trade and economic policy making and management of the civil service.

During service in the Hong Kong Trade Department in the late 1980s Mr Harbinson was involved in the Uruguay Round as one of Hong Kong's main negotiators and also had responsibility for commercial relations with Europe and Asia. He became Deputy Secretary for Trade and Industry from 1991 to 1992 with overall responsibility for Hong Kong’s trade and industry policy. Having also had previous human resources management experience, he then served as Deputy Secretary for the Civil Service from 1992 to 1994, with overall policy responsibility for Hong Kong's 180,000-strong civil service.

In September 1994 he was posted to Geneva as Hong Kong’s Permanent Representative, initially to the GATT and subsequently, as from 1 January 1995, to the World Trade Organisation. From 1 July 1997 until September 2002 he was designated as the first Permanent Representative of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China to the World Trade Organisation.

While serving as Permanent Representative to the WTO in Geneva, Mr. Harbinson chaired various dispute settlement panels, was Chairman of the TRIPS Council (1995), Vice- Chairman of the Committee on Regional Trade Agreements (1996-7), Chairman of the Council for Trade in Services (1999) and the Dispute Settlement Body (2000). He then chaired the WTO's General Council in 2001-2, overseeing preparations for the launch of the Doha Development Agenda at the WTO's Fourth Ministerial Conference in Doha in November 2001 and the subsequent establishment of the Trade Negotiations Committee.

Mr Harbinson chaired the International Textiles and Clothing Bureau, an intergovernmental organization whose membership comprises solely developing countries with exporting interests in the textiles and clothing field, from 1999 to 2002.

From February 2002 to February 2004 he was Chairman of the WTO Special Session of the WTO's Committee on Agriculture, the body responsible for conducting the agriculture negotiations under the Doha Development Agenda.

Born on 10 September 1947, he is married with one child. He holds a Master of Arts degree from Cambridge (England).