Roberto Dañino

Roberto Dañino built a career in international business law before serving in Peru’s cabinet and its Washington embassy. He holds law degrees from the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru and Harvard. His practice included partnerships in Lima and at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering in the United States, where he led the Latin American practice. He was also the founding general counsel of the Inter-American Investment Corporation. ¹

As prime minister in 2001–02, Dañino helped negotiate the Acuerdo Nacional, bringing government, political parties, and civil society into discussions of long term national policy. He also launched public sector modernization and competitiveness initiatives. He subsequently became Peru’s ambassador to the United States. In September 2003, while still ambassador, he was unanimously elected secretary-general of the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes and appointed senior vice-president and general counsel of the World Bank; he was to take up those duties at the end of October. ¹

At the Bank, where he served as general counsel from 2003 to 2006, he argued for a more explicit recognition of human rights in development work. A later World Bank legal study describes his view that the institution could take human rights into account without violating its charter’s prohibition on political interference. According to the study, his legal interpretation was distinct from the Bank's formal institutional policy. ²