Food insecurity in small economies - Focus on trade policy and facilitation

Jaime Granados is Trade and Investment Division Chief at the Inter-American Development Bank. In such capacity, Jaime supervises the formulation, execution and evaluation of financial and non-financial trade and investment support operations and provides technical advice to Governments and other stakeholders on issues of trade, investment and integration.

He was also Adjunct Professor of a course on Trade and Integration in the Americas at Georgetown University Law Center (2004-2008).

Before joining the Bank in 1998, Jaime was Director General for International Trade Negotiations at the Ministry of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica.

He holds a MSc in Public Policy from Oxford University, an LLM in International Trade Law from the University of Georgia and a Law Degree from the University of Costa Rica. He has published extensively on issues of trade and integration.

Anton Edmunds is the General Manager of the Caribbean Country Department at the Inter-American Development Bank Group. He previously served as St. Lucia's Ambassador to the US and Mexico, High Commissioner to Canada, as well as Permanent Representative to the Organization of American States. Prior to his diplomatic engagement, Anton provided advisory services to governments and businesses in trade, tourism and competitiveness.

He has been a contributor to the Inter-American Dialogue's Latin American Advisor publication; a contributor to the Atlantic Council's Latin America Initiative; was a Senior Associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); and was the Chair of the Caribbean Program at the US Department of State's Foreign Service Institute from October 2014 - November 2016.  

Anton has a Bachelor's degree from The Catholic University of America and a Master's Degree from the American University.

Edna Ramirez-Robles has 20 years of experience as an international consultant in +58 jurisdictions worldwide. Her expertise is on legal and political issues of international trade and investment. She is the CEO and Founder of GoBizGlobal. She has carried out Technical Assistance Projects financed by USAID, EU, WTO, ICO, IsDB, TradeMark South Africa; UEMOA, IDB, UNDP, CIPE and UNCTAD. She worked at Secretariats of international organizations such as UNCTAD, WTO, and IDB.

Furthermore, she is a Professor at the University of Guadalajara campus Puerto Vallarta (CUC) and she has lectured at American University and worked at Georgetown University and at the Graduate Institute of International Studies.

Edna Ramirez-Robles graduated as a lawyer from University of Guadalajara, Mexico. Her PhD/SJD and LLM from the Universidad Complutense from Madrid (Ortega y Gasset Institute) are on European Studies and specialized on International Trade Law. Moreover, she has authored more than 60 publications.

Roble Sabrie is an Economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) with over fifteen years of experience related to agriculture economics and rural development including assignments focused on value chain development, agribusiness development, market linkages, food systems analysis, regional trade, and rural poverty reduction in Latin America, Caribbean, Africa and Eastern Europe. He has contributed to numerous publications and supported projects on these critical topics.

Recent analysis work include: Study for the establishment of a maritime service to improve agrifood trade and food security between Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada and Barbados; Identification of a pipeline of potential agrifood borrowers in the Caribbean (for the AGRiFi EU financed impact fund); Priority areas for irrigation investments in Belize; Study on the State of Agriculture in the Caribbean.

Roble holds an MA in development economics from the University of Sussex (UK) and a BSc in economics from Roma Tre University (Italy).