Biswanath Debnath

I have been working on social development issues, especially involuntary resettlement, for the past 27 years in developing countries, including Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Cambodia, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Mongolia, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. I have Ph.D. (1987) and M.A. (1985) degrees in Social Anthropology from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. I retired in early 2017 from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Manila, the Philippines, at age 60, where I worked for eight and a half years as a Social Safeguards Specialist, in its corporate home for the safeguards, in its South Asia, as well as in its Central and West Asia regional departments. I started work in ADB in its corporate social and environmental safeguards unit where my work involved providing technical support for and monitoring the application of social safeguard policies in the ADB borrowing developing member countries. Since my retirement, I have been engaged by ADB as a staff consultant for its projects in Cambodia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Philippines, and Uzbekistan on a long-term basis, presently up to December 2020.