OPENING SESSION

Welcome Dr. Christopher Landsberg Director, Centre for Policy Studies Member, World Movement Steering Committee (South Africa)

Dr. Christopher Landsberg is Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, a Johannesburg-based research organization. Before joining the Centre, he was a lecturer and Co-Director of the Centre for African International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Department of International Relations. He has published widely on South Africa’s transition, the international community, African politics, and racial discrimination. From 1994 to 1996, he presented his own current affairs program on South African television. Landsberg was educated at the Rand Afrikaans University, Rhodes University, and Oxford. He was also a Hamburg Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

Lodi Gyari is the Special Envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama and the Executive Chair of the Board of Directors of the International Campaign for Tibet. Born in Nyarong, Kham in eastern Tibet, he was recognized as the reincarnation of Khempo Aten and received a traditional monastic education in Tibet. Mr. Gyari is the principal person appointed by His Holiness the Dalai Lama to establish contact with the Chinese government on his behalf and was a member of the high-level exploratory delegation sent by the Dalai Lama to hold discussions with Chinese government officials in Beijing in 1982 and 1984. He visited China and Tibet in September 2002 and May-June 2003 to re-establish contact with the Chinese leadership. Mr. Gyari has served in the Assembly of Tibetan People's Deputies of the Tibetan Government in Exile, and as a Cabinet Minister. He is also one of the founding members of the Tibetan Youth Congress, serving as its President in 1975. He was also the founding editor of the Tibetan Review.

Zainab Bangura is the Chair and Co Founder of Sierra Leone’s youngest political party—Movement for Progress Party—that seeks to promote good governance, integrity and the empowerment of women, youth and the disabled. She started her activism as a pro democracy activist by leading the campaign against the military Junta in Sierra Leone in 1995 that ultimately led to that country’s first multi- party democratic elections in three decades in 1996. She moved on to co-found the Campaign for Good governance, which she ran for 6 years and which became the country’s largest indigenous NGO working for the promotion of democratic participation, human rights, the rule of law and economic and political emancipation. Ms. Bangura recently co-founded the National Accountability Group in Sierra Leone, a coalition of civil society and individuals dedicated to ensuring the proper accountability of the government and also of curbing corruption in both private and public spheres. She is presently a Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.

Ivan Krastev is the Chairman of the Board and Research Director at the Center for Liberal Strategies, based in Sofia, Bulgaria. Through sophisticated in-depth analytical reports, he has influenced the policies of the Bulgarian government on key issues such as establishing a primary election system in Bulgaria and fostering international and regional cooperation. He has led a number of major policy research projects in Bulgaria which included reports on human security in Southeastern Europe and the prospects for NATO enlargement into the Balkan region. In recognition of his work, he has received a number of international research awards, including the Manfred Woerner Fellowship and the Woodrow Wilson Policy Fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, and fellowships at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and the Institute for Advanced Studies at the Budapest University. Mr. Krastev holds an M.A. in Philosophy from the University of Sofia.