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Building the World Movement for DemocracyInaugural World AssemblyFebruary 14-17, 1999 New Delhi, India Speakers List Gary Ackerman Congressman Gary Ackerman represents the 5th Congressional District of New York in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1998 he assumed the co-chairmanship of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans. Elected in 1983, Ackerman is a member of the Banking and International Relations Committees. He is the ranking Democrat on the Western Hemispere Subcommittee. Olisaemeka Agbakoba Olisa Agbakoba is the co-founder of Nigeria's foremost human rights organization, the Civil Liberties Organisation. A graduate of the London School of Economics and Political Science, he served as a research fellow in the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs' (NIIA) Law and Intelligence Department. Agbakoba left NIIA after a year and formed his own law firm, Olisa Agbakoba and Associates, which specializes in commercial and maritime law. He has been a leader in the country's pro-democratic movement, and is the president of Afronet, an international NGO dedicated to furthering the human rights cause. Sergio Aguayo Sergio Aguayo has been a professor at the Colegio de Mexico's Center for International Relations since 1977. Aguayo received a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins' School of Advanced International Studies. He has been a visiting Fellow or Professor in several institutions, including the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego and the Ortega y Gasset Foundation in Madrid. Aguayo has also been actively involved in the promotion of democracy and human rights through organizations such as Civic Alliance and the Mexican Academy of Human Rights. For his work on democracy and human rights issues he was awarded NED's Democracy Award in 1995. Iris Almeida Iris Almeida is Director of Programs at the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development based in Montreal, Canada. She has been the Head of Programs for both Africa and Asia at the Centre. In 1997 she initiated a new program on Justice and the Rule of Law and coordinated the Centre's advocacy work for the creation of an effective International Criminal Court. From 1988 to 1991, she was Programs Coordinator at Partnership Africa Canada, a coalition of 120 organizations working on long-term development programs in Africa. Genaro Arriagada Genaro Arriagada was appointed as Ambassador of Chile to the United States in August 1998. Before this, he served as Special Envoy of the President of the Second Summit of the Americas. Arriagada was the Minister Secretary General to the Presidency from 1994 to 1996. Among the numerous positions Arriagada has held are National Director of the "No" campaign in the plebiscite of October 1988; Chief of the presidential campaign of President Eduardo Frei in 1993; and Vice President and Secretary General of the Chilean Christian Democratic Party. He has participated as an international observer to elections in Nicaragua, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Bulgaria and Mexico, and has provided advice on coalition building and monitoring elections. In 1988 he was awarded the Averell Harriman Democracy Award by the National Democratic Institute of International Affairs. Czeslaw Bielecki Czeslaw Bielecki is chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Sejm (parliament) of the Republic of Poland. Bielecki leads the Group of One Hundred, a conservative party focusing on advancing Poland's free-market economic reforms; the Group of One Hundred is a member of the governing Solidarity Election Action coalition. A former dissident, Bielecki was a member of underground Solidarity and was imprisoned for his pro-democratic activities in 1985. Sonja Biserko Sonja Biserko is Chair of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. Since the outbreak of war in the former Yugoslavia, she has worked with a number of international NGOs to protect and promote civil and human rights, and has participated in and helped to organize several international conferences on the crisis. She is a founding member of the European Movement in Yugoslavia, which is concerned with senitizing the public to processes of European integration, the Center for Anti-War Action, and the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. Richard F. Celeste Richard Celeste is the United States Ambassador to India. Celeste was the governor of Ohio for two terms from 1983 to 1991. He has served as Chairman of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, Chairman of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science Advisory Board, a member of the Secretary of Energy's Advisory Board and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He worked as Special Assistant to the American Ambassador to India in New Delhi for four years. Lloyd Doggett Lloyd Doggett has been a member of the United States House of Representatives since 1995. He represents the 10th district of Texas, which includes Austin. Doggett possesses a Juris Doctorate from the University of Texas. He is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Doggett served as a Justice on the Texas Supreme Court from 1989 to 1994, and as a member of the Texas State Senate from 1973 to 1989. Margeret Dongo Margeret Dongo is an elected member of the Zimbabwean Parliament, making a visible contribution to the debates on public issues. Active in the movement for the liberation of her country, she is now a democratic politician who enjoys universal respect. Peter Eigen Peter Eigen, a lawyer by training, is a member of Transparency International's Board of Directors. He has worked in economic development for 25 years, mainly as a manager of programmes in Africa and Latin America for the World Bank. Under Ford Foundation sponsorship, he provided legal and technical assistance to the governments of Botswana and Namibia, and taught law at the universities of Frankfurt and Georgetown. From 1988 to 1991 he was the World Bank's Director of the Regional Mission for Eastern Africa. Emilio Lamo de Espinosa Emilio Lamo de Espinosa is the Professor of Sociology at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid and Director of the Ortega y Gasset Institute. He served as Spain's Director-General of Universities and Minister of Education and Science from 1982 to 1985. From 1985 to 1987, Espinosa was Secretary-General of the Counsel of Universities. He is a regular contributor to the newspaper El Pais and author of 12 books, including Sociedades de cultura y sociedades de ciencia. George Fernandes George Fernandes is a member of the Lok Sabha, where he is serving for the sixth time. He is the founding Chairman of The New India Cooperative Bank, and has been involved in human rights and civil liberties movements all over the world. In 1990 Fernandes served as the Minister of Kashmir Affairs and in 1977 he served as the Union Cabinet Minister in both Communications and Industry. Jamshyd N. Godrej Jamshyd Godrej is the Managing Director of Godrej & Boyce, market leaders in office furniture, security equipment, locks, forklift trucks and typewriters, is a past president of the Confederation of Indian Industry. He is also a past President of the Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers' Association. Godrej is a graduate in Mechanical Engineering and has a post-graduate degree in Business Administration, both from Illinois Institute of Technology, USA. I.K. Gujral Inder Kumar Gujral was sworn in as the 13th Prime Minister of India in 1997 and served until February 1998. An active participant in India's freedom struggle, Gujral was the Minister of External Affairs in the outgoing government, and held several ministerial positions from 1967 to 1976, including Minister of Communications and Parliamentary Affairs, Minister of Information and Broadcasting and Minister of Works and Housing and Minister of Planning. He was the Minister of External Affairs from 1989 to 1990. Since June 1996 he has been the leader of Rajya Sabha, the Upper House of the Indian Parliament. Ernesto Herrera Ernesto Herrera is a legislator in the Philippines' Congress and a trade union leader. Herrera was the only Filipino member of the Executive Board of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions in Brussels, Belgium from 1988 to 1992; a consultant on worker's education of the International Labour Organization in Geneva, Switzerland; and head of the Worker's Delegation to the 75th Session of the International Labour Organization. Asma Jehangir Asma Jehangir is a human rights lawyer and Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. A member of the Women's Action Forum, she has been a steadfast defender of the rights of women, children, religious minorities, and human rights in general. As the founder of an all-women law firm, she has defended numerous people including a 22-year-old woman whose father sought to have her marriage declared illegal because she had married without his consent. Ivan Krastev Ivan Krastev is the Chairman of the Board and Research Director of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, a public policy research institute based in Sofia, Bulgaria. He is a founding member of the Balkan Civic Network, a member of the Advisory Board of the Democracy Network project in Bulgaria, and a member of the Editorial Board of "L'Europe du Centre-Est," an academic journal. Krastev, who has headed up major research projects on issues related to NATO enlargement and European cooperation, is the author of over 350 articles on East European politics and societies. Hsiu-Lien Annette Lu Hsiu-Lien Annette Lu is a leading member of Taiwan's national parliament and the founder of the Taiwanese feminist movement, which led to her arrest and imprisonment in 1978 for sedition. After being adopted by Amnesty International and years of international pressure, she was released in 1985. In 1992 Lu was elected to Taiwan's parliament, and four years later President Lee Teng-hui appointed her as one of his key advisers. James A. McDermott James McDermott has been a member of United States House of Representatives since 1989. He represents the 7th Congressional district in Washington state (which includes Seattle) and is a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. A graduate of the University of Illinois Medical School, he served in the U.S. Navy Medical Corps from 1968 to 1970, and as a regional medical officer in the U.S. Foreign Service from 1987 to 1988. Prior to his service in Congress, McDermott served a combined total of more than 14 years in the two houses of the Washington State legislature. Ashis Nandy Ashis Nandy is the Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies and Chairperson of the Committee for Cultural Choices and Global Futures, both located in Delhi. He is a political psychologist and sociologist of science who has worked on cultures of knowledge, visions, and dialogue of civilizations. He has coauthored a number of human rights reports and is active in movements for peace, alternative sciences and technologies, and cultural survival. Nandy has been a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, Washington, D.C., a Charles Wallace Fellow at the University of Hull, and a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, University of Edinburgh. Ayo Obe Ayo Obe, the second President of Nigeria's Civil Liberties Organisation (CLO), was returned unopposed in October 1995 for a four-year term. In October 1998, Obe was one of eight African human rights activists at a roundtable discussion in Dakar, Senegal, with President and Mrs. Clinton. Obe is a member of the Nigerian Bar Association and the International Bar Association. David Price David Price represents the 4th Congressional District of North Carolina in the U.S. House of Representatives. First elected in 1986, he won the seat back in 1996 after the Republicans had taken the district two years earlier. Price, a political scientist who taught for a number of years at Duke University, is a former state Democratic Party Chairman. He is a member of the Appropriations Committee. Mary Robinson Mary Robinson is the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and the former President of Ireland. Robinson was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, King's Inns, Dublin, and Harvard University. She was Reid Professor of Constitutional and Criminal Law at Trinity College from 1969 to 1975, and also a Lecturer in European Community Law at Trinity College. Robinson founded and was Director of the Irish Centre for European Law (1988-1990). She also served as a Senator from 1969 to 1989. As President of Ireland (1990-1997), Robinson represented her country internationally, developing a new sense of Ireland's economic, political and cultural links with other countries and cultures. She was the first Head of State to visit Rwanda in the aftermath of the genocide there and made two further visits, the most recent to address the Pan-African Conference on 'Peace, Gender and Development'. Amartya Sen Amartya Sen is a Nobel Laureate in Economics and the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge (UK). He is a former Lamont University Professor at Harvard University. A native of India, Dr. Sen has received numerous awards including the Mahalanobis Prize in 1976, the Indira Gandhi Gold Medal Award of the Asiatic Society in 1994, and 9th Catalonia International Prize in 1997. He received his Ph.D. from Trinity College of Cambridge along with many honorary degrees from universities around the world. Sen's published works include "India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity," published in 1995; "Indian Development: Selected Regional Perspectives," published in 1997; and "The Political Economy of Hunger," published in 1990 and 1991. Jaswant Singh Jaswant Singh is India's External Affairs Minister. Singh was first elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1980, and was re-elected in 1986 and 1988. In 1989, 1991 and 1996 he was elected to the Lok Sabha. During that time he served as chairman of the Estimates Committee of Parliament, the Environment & Forest Committee of Parliament, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy and the Executive Committee of the Indian Parliamentary Group. He also served as the Minister of Finance. He now serves as the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission in addition to his position as External Affairs Minister. Manmohan Singh Manmohan Singh is the former Finance Minister of India, and served as an adviser to the Prime Minister of India on Economic Affairs in 1990 and 1991. Singh holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford, and has received numerous awards including the Padma Vibhushan Award by the President of India and the Wright's Prize for distinguished performance from St. John's College of Cambridge. He is an honorary professor of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and an Honorary Fellow of the Indian Institute of Bankers. Frank G. Wisner Frank Wisner is Vice Chairman of External Affairs for the American International Group, Inc. (AIG). Prior to joining AIG, he was the U.S. Ambassador to India from July 1994 through July 1997. Wisner joined the State Department as a Foreign Service Office in 1961 and served in a variety of overseas and Washington positions during his 36-year career. Among his other positions, he served successively as U.S. Ambassador to Zambia, Egypt, and the Philippines. Before being named U.S. Ambassador to India, he served as Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Mr. Wisner is a graduate of Princeton University. |
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