Asma Jahangir  Pakistan
Ms. Jahangir is the Co-Founder of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan and the Women’s Action Forum. Ms. Jahangir is a leading human rights lawyer and has spearheaded advocacy efforts on children’s rights, prisoner’s rights, women’s rights and on judicial and constitutional reform. In 1998 she was appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Extra-Judicial Killings. Asma Jahangir is the recipient of several international awards and prizes including the 1998 King Baudouin International Development Prize and the 1999 Human Rights Award by Lawyers Committee for Human Rights most recently she was awarded the UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women) Millennium Peace Prize in 2001.

*Aung San Suu Kyi  Burma
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is the Secretary-General of the National League for Democracy in Burma. Aund San Suu Kyi has been an active promoter of democracy, justice and human rights for the people of Burma and as a result been placed under house arrest several times, most recently released in May 2002 after 19 months of imprisonment. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her tireless effort in the struggle for democracy in Burma.

Bronislaw Geremek  Poland
Mr. Geremek is the former foreign minister of Poland and a former member of Parliament. He is a founding member of the Democratic Union and from 1994-1997 he chaired the Freedom Union’s Parliamentary Caucus. In August 1980 Professor Geremek became a senior advisor to the Gdansk Strike Committee and helped found the independent trade union Solidarnosc (Solidarity). After his detainment under martial law in December 1981 and release a year later, he became an advisor to the clandestine Solidarity Provisional Committee and an aide to Lech Walesa. He has received numerous awards and honorary doctoral degrees.

Emeka Anyaoku  Nigeria
Mr. Anyaoku is a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics’ Centre for the Study of Global Governance, Global Dimensions research program. Mr. Anyaoku is the former Secretary-General of the Commonwealth (1990-2000). In that role he has been actively involved in seeking diplomatic resolution on issues such as the Gibraltar referendum of 1967, the Nigerian civil war of 1967-70, the St Kitts-Nevis-Anguilla constitutional crisis of 1969-70, the problems following Commonwealth Games boycotts during the 1980s and the process leading to peace and democracy in Zimbabwe, Namibia and, in particular, South Africa. In early 1997, he organized the first African Commonwealth Heads of Government Roundtable to promote democracy and good governance on the continent.

Emma Bonino  Italy
Ms. Bonino is a member of the European Parliament and the former Commissioner of Humanitarian Affairs and Fisheries. She is a member of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, Human Rights, Common Security and Defense Policy and the Committee on Development and Cooperation. From 1995-1999 Ms. Bonino was the Secretary-General of the Transnational Radical Party and played a leading role in promoting the International Criminal Court. Throughout her career she has been an active promoter of international human, civil and political rights campaigns in the countries of Eastern Europe.

Frene Ginwala  South Africa
Dr. Ginwala is the Speaker of the National Assembly of the Parliament of the Republic of South Africa and has held the position since 1994. She is also the President of South African Speakers’ Forum, and Co-Chairperson of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association. Dr. Ginwala has served as Co-Chairperson of the Global Coalition for Africa and is a member of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Panel of High-Level Personalities on African Development. Dr. Ginwala formed part of the task force to establish the ANC Women’s League and helped to set up the Women’s National Coalition.

George Soros  United States
Mr. Soros is Chairman of the Open Society Institute and the founder of a network of philanthropic organizations that are active in more than 50 countries. Mr. Soros has been active as a philanthropist since 1979, when he began providing funds to help black students attend Capetown University in apartheid South Africa. The Soros Foundation is based primarily in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union--but also in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and the United States--these foundations are dedicated to building and maintaining the infrastructure and institutions of an open society. In 1992, Mr. Soros founded the Central European University, with its primary campus in Budapest.

John Lewis  United States
Mr. Lewis is a member of the U.S. Congress and for more than forty years he has been in the vanguard of progressive social movements and the human rights struggles of the United States. Mr. Lewis has been a member of Congress since 1986. Previously he served as Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Associate Director of the Field Foundation, and Director of the Voter Education Project. He has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Martin Luther King, Jr. Non-Violent Peace Prize.

Jose Ramos-Horta  East Timor
Mr. Ramos-Horta is the current President and former Prime Minister of East Timor. After his 1975 exile from East Timor he became the permanent representative of FRETILIN (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor) at the UN, a position he held until 1989. In 1996 Mr. Ramos-Horta was awarded the Nobel Price for Peace in honor of his efforts against the oppressive Indonesian control of his homeland. Mr. Ramos-Horta has written extensively about human rights abuses and in 1989 he founded the Diplomatic Training Program, which seeks to advance human rights and empower civil society in Asia.

Madeleine Albright  United States
Dr. Albright is currently the Chairman of The National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. She is the founder of the Albright Group LLC, a global strategy firm and a professor at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. She previously served as Secretary of State of the United States and as the United States Permanent Representative to the United Nations. Dr. Albright has been a member of the United States National Security Council under Presidents Clinton and Carter. She also served as President of the Center for National Policy, a think tank. Throughout her career Dr. Albright has worked actively to promote the expansion of democracy in Europe, Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Michel Rocard  France
Mr. Rocard is a member of the ACP-EU Joint Assembly, a member of the USA delegation and works closely with the Development and Cooperation Committee. Mr. Rocard served as the Prime Minister of France from 1988-1991. He has a long history of social service and was first elected to the French Parliament in 1969 and subsequently held many ministerial appointments in President Mitterand’s government. He also served as Secretary-General of the Parti Socialist Unife and the Parti Socialiste.

Mohamed Sahnoun  Algeria
Mr. Sahnoun is a Special Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations. Previously Mr. Sahnoun was Co-chair of the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. He has served as the Joint Representative of the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in the Great Lakes Region and Central Africa, Special Advisor to the Director-General of UNESCO for the Culture of Peace Program, and as a member of the Special Advisory Group of the War-Torn Societies Project. During his career, Mr. Sahnoun has been Counselor to the President of Algeria on Foreign Affairs. He also served as Algeria’s Ambassador to Morocco and Secretary to the Maghreb Union (1989-1990), Ambassador to the United States (1984-1989), Chief of Algeria’s Mission to the United Nations (1982-1984), Ambassador to France (1979-1982) and Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany (1975-1979).

Pavol Demes  Slovakia
Pavol Demes, is the Director for Central and Eastern Europe of the German Marshall Fund of the United States based in Bratislava, Slovakia. Previously he served as the Executive Director of the Slovak Academic Information Agency-Service Center. Mr. Demes was Foreign Policy Advisor of the President of the Slovak Republic (1993-97) and from 1991-92 he was the Minister of International Relations in the Government of the Slovak Republic. An internationally recognized NGO leader, Demes has spoken on civil society and NGO issues in many international fora. He holds collective EU-US Democracy and Civil Society Award, since 1998; USAID Democracy and Governance Award (1999), and Democracy and Civil Society Award by the Serbian NGOs (2000).

Samira A.S. Omar  Kuwait
Ms. Omar is an environmental activist and advocate for women’s rights. She is a member of the board to the Women Cultural and Social Society whose mission is to promote the role of Kuwaiti women in social, culture and economic development. She has served as a consultant to the UNDP, World Bank, and the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences. She in a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and the Kuwait Environment Protection Society.

Sergey Kovalev  Russia
Mr. Kovalev is currently a member of the Russian Duma. In 1993 he was elected as national ombudsman by the Russian Parliament. He is the former Chairman of the President’s Human Rights Commission and human rights commissioner for the Russian Parliament and an outspoken critic of the Russian war in Chechnya. He has been an activist of the human rights movement since the mid-1960s and in 1969 Mr. Kovalev was the founder of the first human rights associations, the Imitative Group for the Defense of Human Rights in the USSR.

Sonia Picado Sotela  Costa Rica
Ms. Picado is the President of the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. She is a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Public Policy Project, a founding Board Member of the Humanitarian Dialog Center and a member of the Council Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. She has served as President of the UN International Commission of Human Rights in East Timor. She was the first woman judge on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and served as Vice-President of the Court from 1992-1994. Ms. Picado was also the Costa Rican representative before the Committee of Experts for the promotion of Human Rights in Central America. In 1993 Ms. Picado was awarded one of the United Nations Human Rights awards for "Extraordinary Effors in [the] Protection and Promotion of Human Rights."

Surin Pitsuwan  Thailand
Dr Surin Pitsuwan is a Member of the Parliament of Thailand and has recently been appointed to the World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization. He was first elected to Parliament in 1986 and has served for 7 consecutive terms. During this period, he was appointed as Secretary to the Speaker of the House of Representatives in 1986. Subsequent appointments were as Assistant Secretary to the Minister of Interior in 1988 and as Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister from 1992-1995. He was appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1992-1995. He was appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1995-2001.

Wangari Maathai  Kenya
Dr. Maathai, the recepient of the 2004 Nobel Prize for Peace, is the founder of the Green Belt Movement and is currently Kenya’s Deputy Environment Minister. She has been one of Africa’s leading environmentalists since the 1970s. Her role as an environmentalist evolved to one of a political dissident speaking out on critical social matters such as the human rights situation in Kenya and standing up for a democratic, multi-ethnic Kenya. Ms. Maathai is a member of the National Ocuncil of Women of Kenya and is Chair of the Department of Veterinary Anatomy. She is a member of the UN’s Advisory Board on Disarmament and is a former member of the Commission of Global Governance.

In Memoriam

Valentin Paniagua (1936-2006)  Peru
Mr. Paniagua served as the interim President of Peru after the collapse of the Fujimori regime and then led the country toward new elections which brought Alejandro Toledo to power. He was first elected to Parliament in 1963 and served as Secretary of Justice. After the 1980 elections he served as Chairman of the House of Representatives, Secretary of Education, General Secretary of the Accion Popular party, and Chairman of Congress. He was a constitutional law scholar.

*Invited