Vi Vietnamese member, Foreign Trade University (FTU), has issued a call for papers to be presented at the international conference, "Trade in the ASEAN Region under the Global Crisis."

The conference will be held at FTU in Hanoi on December 7, and will feature a keynote speech by Vi Swiss member coordinator, Pierre Sauvé, of the World Trade Institute.

Vi members may also apply for a waiver of conference fees.

Two lecturers from Tanzania and one from Argentina worked on their research projects with UNCTAD experts in Geneva between June 1 and July 10, as part of the Virtual Institute Fellowship Programme.

Mesia Ilomo (pictured, left) and Chacha Ryoba Magubo (middle), of Vi Tanzanian member, University of Dar es Salaam, spent six weeks in UNCTAD developing their PhD proposals. Marcelo Saguier, of Vi Argentinian member, Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO), worked on a paper that will be included in the Vi Latin American joint project on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

The fellowships were funded by the governments of Finland and Spain.

Vi members Thi Mai Khanh of Vietnam's Foreign Trade University (FTU), and Ramón Torrent of Spain's Universitat de Barcelona (UB), report success in obtaining a grant for a joint project to enhance FTU's trade policy teaching and research activities.

"We highly appreciate your support during the project preparation process, especially for recommending to us a very competent partner like UB and a considerate and effective coordinator as Prof. Torrent," writes Khanh. "This project is once again evidence of the efficiency and success of Vi network coordination."

The University of Mauritius (UoM) in collaboration with the UNCTAD Virtual Institute, held a workshop April 21-22 with the goal of fostering better understanding of the nature of international trade and instruments, including policies related to trade.

Participants were selected from a pool of trade and economic analysts, university lecturers, members of chambers of commerce, researchers, exporters, staff of export associations and Masters level students from Mauritius and the English-speaking African countries.

Thirty-five students, instructors and members of the trade and financial sectors examined quantitative research methods and tools during a workshop organized by the Virtual Institute for Senegalese Vi member, Cheikh Anta Diop University. The workshop was held April 14-17 in the Faculté des Sciences Economiques et de Gestion (FASEG) of the university.

Under the direction of Marco Fugazza, of UNCTAD's Division on International Trade in Goods and Services and Commodities, the four-day workshop was broken into eight sessions dealing with trade data analysis tools and research issues, such as the link between trade and poverty, trade protection and tariffs, international investment agreements and multilateral negotiations.