[WSIS CS-Plenary] Elizabeth Longworth New Director of UNESCO's Information Society Division

[zielinskic at who.int]

Thought the following item might be of interest to readers of this list
(apologies for cross-posting) - from
http://portal.unesco.org/ci/ev.php?URL_ID=12483&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=
201&reload=1062414563 

Chris Zielinski
STP CSI/GPR/EGB
World Health Organization
Avenue Appia, CH1211 Geneva
Switzerland
Tel: 004122-7914435 or mobile 0044797-1045354

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Elizabeth Longworth New Director of UNESCO's Information Society Division,
28-08-2003 (UNESCO)

Elizabeth Longworth, a cyberspace-law expert from New Zealand, has just
taken office as Director of UNESCO's Information Society Division. Longworth
succeeds Philippe Quéau, of France, who now heads the UNESCO Office in
Moscow, Russian Federation. 

Ms Longworth holds a Bachelor of Laws degree (LLB) from Victoria University
of Wellington, New Zealand (1977). In 1979, she was called to the bar of the
High Court of New Zealand as a Barrister and Solicitor. She also holds a
Master of Laws degree (LLM) awarded by Osgoode Hall Law School, York
University, Canada. 

Since December 2000, Ms Longworth was the Director of the ICT Sector at New
Zealand Trade and Enterprise, New Zealand's national economic development
agency. She was responsible for the development and implementation of
national strategies and programmes on ICT. This work included the
"enablement" potential of the technology to deliver benefits in education
and health, as well as other social and economic benefits. 

Prior to her work in economic development, Ms Longworth practised law in New
Zealand and developed a specialist legal and international consultancy
practice advising on a wide-range of areas, including information policy
issues, privacy, e-commerce, dispute resolution, bioinformatics and global
information infrastructure. 

She has longstanding experience working with international agencies such as
OECD, WIPO, and UNESCO, with whom she has collaborated in areas such as
transborder data flows, online dispute resolution, e-privacy, copyright and
patenting, global networks and e-commerce. She is a trained mediator and
facilitator and until recently was a member of the WIPO Panel of Neutrals.
>From 1998 to 2000, she chaired the New Zealand telecommunications industry
body on number administration and portability. Her committee work included
being an adviser to the New Zealand Law Commission on E-commerce. 

Ms Longworth has attended and chaired numerous international meetings and
symposia both in her personal capacity and as a representative of New
Zealand. She was a member of the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO,
has been closely associated with many activities of UNESCO's Communication
and Information Sector and inter alia chaired one of the expert meetings on
the draft recommendation concerning the promotion and use of multilingualism
and universal access to cyberspace. She has authored numerous articles in
her fields of specialisation. Her publications include an extensive text of
New Zealand's privacy laws, and she was a contributing author to
International Laws of Cyberspace, published by UNESCO 2000.