Gareth Evans
(Australia), Co-Chair, has been President and Chief Executive
of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group since January
2000. He was an Australian Senator and MP from 1978 to 1999,
and a Cabinet Minister for thirteen years (1983-96). As Foreign
Minister (1988-96), he played prominent roles in developing
the UN peace plan for Cambodia, concluding the Chemical Weapons
Convention, founding the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation
(APEC) forum and initiating the Canberra Commission on the
Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. He is a Queen's Counsel (1983),
and Officer of the Order of Australia (2001). His many publications
include Cooperating for Peace (1993) and the article "Cooperative
Security and Intrastate Conflict" (Foreign Policy, 1994),
for which he won the 1995 Grawemeyer Prize for Ideas Improving
World Order.
Mohamed Sahnoun
(Algeria), Co-Chair, is a Special Advisor to the UN Secretary-General
and has previously served as Special Envoy of the Secretary-General
on the Ethiopian/Eritrean conflict 1999; Joint United Nations/Organization
of African Unity (OAU) Special Representative for the Great
Lakes Region of Africa (1997); and Special Representative
of the Secretary-General for Somalia (March-October 1992).
He was also a member of the World Commission on Environment
and Development (the Brundtland Commission). A senior Algerian
diplomat, he served as Ambassador to Germany, France, the
United States, and Morocco, and as Permanent Representative
to the United Nations in New York. He also served as Deputy
Secretary-General of both the Organization of African Unity
and the Arab League.
Gisèle Côté-Harper
(Canada) is a barrister and professor of law at Laval University,
Québec. She has been a member, among numerous other
bodies, of the UN Human Rights Committee, the Inter-American
Institute of Human Rights and the Québec Human Rights
Commission. She was Chair of the Board of the International
Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Montréal)
1990-96 and a member of the official Canadian delegation
to the Fourth World Conference on Women, Beijing 1995. She
was awarded the Lester B. Pearson Peace Medal in 1995, and
in 1997 became an Officer of the Order of Canada, as well
as receiving the Québec Bar Medal. Among her published
works is Traité de droit pénal canadien (4th
ed., 1998).
Lee Hamilton
(United States) is Director of the Woodrow Wilson International
Center for Scholars, Washington DC, and Director of the Center
on Congress at Indiana University. A member of the US Congress
from 1965 to 1999, his distinguished record includes Chairmanships
of the Committee on International Relations, the Permanent
Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Joint Economic Committee.
He has served on a number of commissions dealing with international
issues, including the Task Force on Strengthening Palestinian
Public Institutions, the Task Force on the Future of International
Financial Architecture, and the Council of Foreign Relations
Independent Task Force on US-Cuban Relations in the 21st Century,
as well as numerous other panels, committees and boards.
Michael Ignatieff
(Canada) is currently Carr Professor of Human Rights Practice
at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He
is also a Senior Fellow of the 21st Century Trust, and served
as a member of the Independent International Commission on
Kosovo. Since 1984, he has worked as a free-lance writer,
broadcaster, historian, moral philosopher and cultural analyst.
He has written extensively on ethnic conflict, and most recently
on the various conflicts in the Balkans, including Virtual
War: Kosovo and Beyond. He has also authored numerous other
works, including a biography of the liberal philosopher Isaiah
Berlin. The Russian Album, a family memoir, won Canada's Governor
General's Literary Award and the Heinemann Prize of Britain's
Royal Society of Literature in 1988. His second novel, Scar
Tissue, was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1993.
Vladimir Lukin
(Russia) is currently Deputy Speaker of the Russian State
Duma. He worked at the Institute of World Economics and International
Relations, Moscow (1961-65) and the Institute of US and
Canadian Studies of the USSR Academy of Sciences (1968-87).
He also served from 1965-68 as an editor of the international
journal Problems of the World and Socialism in Prague, but
was expelled for opposing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia
in 1968. He joined the USSR Foreign Ministry in 1987 and served
as Russian Ambassador to the USA (1992-93). He was elected
a Deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Soviet Federated
Socialist Republic in 1990 and to the State Duma of the Russian
Federation in 1993. In that year he helped found the Yabloko
Faction, a party which he still represents. He served as Chair
of the International Affairs Committee of the Duma (1995-99).
Klaus Naumann
(Germany) served as Chairman of the North Atlantic Military
Committee of NATO (1996-99) and played a central role
in managing the Kosovo crisis and in developing NATO's new
integrated military command structure. He joined the German
Bundeswehr in 1958. As a colonel, he served on the staff of
the German Military Representative to the NATO Military Committee
in Brussels in 1981-82. He was promoted to Brigadier
General in 1986, followed by a two star assignment as Assistant
Chief of Staff of the Federal Armed Forces. He was promoted
to Four Star General in 1991 and appointed at the same time
Chief of Staff, a position he held until becoming Chairman
of the North Atlantic Military Committee. After retirement,
he served as a member of the Panel on United Nations Peace
Operations.
Cyril Ramaphosa
(South Africa) is currently Executive Chairman of Rebserve,
a major South African service and facilities management company.
He was elected Secretary-General of the African National Congress
in June 1991, but left politics for business in 1996. He played
a major role in building the biggest and most powerful trade
union in South Africa, the National Union of Mineworkers from
1982 onwards. A lawyer by training, his university years were
interrupted by periods in jail for political activities. He
played a crucial role in negotiations with the former South
African regime to bring about a peaceful end to apartheid
and steer the country towards its first democratic elections
in April 1994, after which he was elected chair of the new
Constitutional Assembly. He received the Olaf Palme prize
in October 1987 and was invited to participate in the Northern
Ireland peace process in May 2000.
Fidel Ramos
(Philippines) served as President of the Republic of the Philippines
from 1992-98, and has, since 1999, been Chairman of the
Ramos Peace and Development Foundation which deals with Asia-Pacific
security, sustainable development, democratic governance and
economic diplomacy. Prior to becoming President, he had a
long and distinguished military and police career, including
service in both the Korean and Vietnam wars. He became Deputy
Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines in 1981,
and Chief of Staff in 1986, and subsequently served as Secretary
of National Defense from 1988-91. He played a central
role in peace negotiations with Muslim rebels in the southern
Philippines, and wrote Break Not the Peace, a book about that
peace process.
Cornelio Sommaruga
(Switzerland) is currently President of the Caux Foundation
for Moral Re-Armament as well as President of the Geneva International
Centre for Humanitarian Demining. He is, in addition, a member
of the Board of the Open Society Institute, Budapest and served
as a member of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations.
Prior to that, he was President of the International Committee
of the Red Cross (1987-1999). From 1984-1986 he
served as Switzerland's State Secretary for External Economic
Affairs. From 1960, he had had a long and distinguished career
as a Swiss diplomat, including a period from 1973 as Deputy
Secretary-General of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA)
in Geneva. In 1977-78 he served as President of the UN
Economic Commission for Europe.
Eduardo Stein
(Guatemala) is currently working with UNDP in Panama and served
as Head of the OAS Observer Mission to Peru's May 2000 general
elections. He was Guatemalan Foreign Minister (1996-2000),
a position in which he played a key role in overseeing the
Guatemalan peace negotiations, particularly in marshalling
international support. He lectured in Universities in Guatemala
and Panama from 1971-80 and 1985-87, and from 1982
to 1993 was based in Panama and worked on various regional
development projects within the Latin American Economic System
(SELA) and the Contadora Group. This involved cooperation
with various Latin American countries, the European Community
and the Nordic countries. From December 1993 to 1995, he was
Resident Representative in Panama of the International Organization
for Migration.
Ramesh Thakur
(India) has been Vice-Rector of the United Nations University,
Tokyo, since 1998, in charge of the University's Peace and
Governance Program. Educated in India and Canada, he was a
lecturer, then Professor of International Relations at the
University of Otago (New Zealand) from 1980 to 1995. He was
then appointed Professor and Head of the Peace Research Centre
at the Australian National University in Canberra where he
was involved in the Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension
Conference, drafting of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
and the International Campaign to Ban Landmines. He was also
a consultant to the Canberra Commission on the Elimination
of Nuclear Weapons. He is the author of numerous books and
articles, including Past Imperfect, Future Uncertain: the
United Nations at Fifty, and in 2000 co-edited Kosovo and
the Challenge of Humanitarian Intervention.