Yuefen Li is an economist and development finance expert. She is Senior Advisor on South-South Cooperation and Development Finance at South Centre – a Geneva based intergovernmental organization. From 2020 to 2021 she served as United Nations Independent Expert on Foreign Debt and Human Rights. She has worked in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) for more than 24 years, and held various senior positions including Head of Debt and Development Finance Branch, Senior Economic Affairs Officer as well as Manager of UNCTAD Project on Promoting Responsible Sovereign Lending and Borrowing, the Project on Sovereign Debt Workout Mechanism.
Before joining the United Nations, she was a lecturer at the University of International Business & Economics in Beijing. She was a guest professor of Tsinghua University and two other universities in China. She has published books, papers and articles in refereed professional journals and newspapers on issues relating to debt, development strategies, South-South cooperation, finance, trade, etc. She has contributed extensively to UNCTAD and South Centre publications and documents.