The Gamani Corea Foundation will host the annual Dr Gamani Corea Memorial Lecture 2026 today (4 November) at the Bandaranaike Centre for International Studies (BCIS) in Colombo 07.
Former Foreign Secretary Ambassador (Retd.) Ravinatha Aryasinha will deliver the address, which begins at 4.30 p.m.
Titled “The Paradoxes of Sri Lanka’s Foreign Policy in the 21st Century”, it will examine the complexities and contradictions shaping the country’s foreign policy and offer a chance to reflect on its evolving role in international affairs.
Aryasinha is Executive Director of the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.
He is also a Board Member of the Gamani Corea Foundation, BCIS and MARGA.
Who was Gamani Corea
Gamani Corea studied at the University of Ceylon and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and earned a DPhil in Economics from Oxford University.
His national career included posts at the Planning Secretariat, the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs and the Bank of Ceylon.
He served as Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to the EEC and the Benelux countries in 1973.
Corea's international career began as a member of the expert team that prepared the first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD I).
He chaired UNCTAD Expert Groups on International Monetary Issues in 1965 and 1969, and was independent Chairman of the UN Cocoa Conference in 1972.
He was also a member, and later Chairman from 1972 to 1974, of the Committee on Development Planning.
In April 1974, he was appointed Secretary-General of UNCTAD, a post he held until December 1984.
After leaving UNCTAD, Corea remained influential internationally, particularly on South-South issues.
He chaired the Board of the South Centre, an intergovernmental organisation of developing countries based in Geneva, from 2002 to 2003.
He also wrote several books, including Taming Commodity Markets, published by Manchester University Press in 1992.
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