Aurea Christine Tanaka was a Sylff Fellow in 2004 while finishing her Ph.D. dissertation submitted to the Department of International Law of the Faculty of Law of the University of São Paulo, Brazil. For her Ph.D. she addressed issues related to International Family Law, focusing on divorce cases involving Brazilians living in Japan. Attorney-at-law, she has advised Brazilian and Japanese in legal problems involving both countries’ legal systems and since 2008 has been working for the Education for Sustainable Development Programme at the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies. She is currently interested in research involving the correlation between law and development, especially the impact and influence of legal instruments in changing behaviour and guiding sustainable practices, as well as partnerships in education for sustainable development. E-mail: tanaka[at]ias.unu.edu. The author would like to express her gratitude to Professor Masato Ninomiya of the University of São Paulo and Mr. Isamu Maruyama from the Tokyo Foundation, for their valuable comments.
