Carlinhos Brown
Antonio Carlos Santos de Freitas, better know for his artistic name of Carlinhos Brown -a name inspired by H. Rap Brown, a Black Panther militant- was born in Candeal Pequeno, a small shanty-town in the Brotes district of Salvador de Bahía (Brazil). He is a singer, composer and musician with an international reputation and is considered one of the most creative and committed artists among the new generation of Brazilian musicians. With his Camarote andante tours, he has managed to infuse the streets of cities throughout the world with his particular blend of Afro-Brazilian rhythms and pop music. His shows expose audiences of up to half a million people not only to the fever of Brazilian carnivals, but also to his commitment to universal education and the fight against urban poverty. In 2004, the United Nations Habitat agency presented him with one of their first Messenger of Truth awards, during the holding of the World Urban Forum, within the framework of the Universal Forum of Cultures in Barcelona.


Antonio Garrigues Walker
Antonio Garrigues Walker was born in Madrid on the 30th September 1934, he is a lawyer, European vice-president of the Trilateral Commission and president of the José Ortega y Gasset Foundation and the Spain-USA Counsel Foundation. He is currently the Honorary President of the Spanish Association of ACNUR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees).


Jonathan Granoff
Jonathan Granoff is an author, attorney, and international peace activist. His life’s work has been dedicated to the total elimination of nuclear weapons worldwide. To that end, he is the current president of the Global Security Institute, a non-profit organization committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons. He also serves as the Co-Chair of the American Bar Association’s Committee on Arms Control and National Security, and as the Vice President of the NGO Committee on Disarmament, Peace and Security at the UN, which is regarded as a primary ally of the international movement for arms control, peace and disarmament. He holds positions on numerous governing and advisory boards including the Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy, the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, the Jane Goodall Institute, the Bipartisan Security Group, and the Middle Powers Initiative.
Mr. Granoff has lectured worldwide emphasizing the legal, ethical, and spiritual dimensions of human development and security, with a specific focus on the threats posed by nuclear weapons. He is the award-winning screenwriter of The Constitution: The Document that Created a Nation, and has been featured in more than 30 publications, including The Sovereignty Revolution (Stanford University Press, 2004) by Alan Cranston. He practices law in Philadelphia.


Noeleen Heyzer
Noeleen Heyzer is the first executive director from the South to head the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), the leading operational agency within the United Nations for promoting the empowerment of women and gender equality. Since joining UNIFEM, Dr Heyzer has worked on strengthening women’s economic security and rights; promoting women’s leadership in conflict resolution, peace-building and reconstruction; ending violence against women; and combating HIV/AIDS from a gender perspective. She also played a critical role in the Security Council’s adoption of Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security and in ensuring that it is implemented so as to make a difference to women’s lives on the ground.
Through her leadership, UNIFEM has assisted countries to formulate and implement legislation and policies to achieve women’s security and rights. This has led, for example, to changes in inheritance laws for women, better working conditions for migrant workers, the inclusion of women as full citizens in the Constitution of Afghanistan and as full participants in several peace negotiations and electoral processes. UNIFEM has also quadrupled its resources, and successfully placed issues affecting women high on the agenda of the UN.
Before joining UNIFEM, Dr Heyzer was a policy adviser to several Asian governments on gender issues, playing a key role in the formulation of national development policies, strategies and programmes from a gender perspective. She has done extensive work at the community level with women migrant workers, women in the informal sector and on plantations, young women in prostitution and female workers in free trade zones.
Dr Heyzer was a founding member of numerous regional and international women’s networks and has published extensively on gender and development issues, especially economic globalization; international migration and people trafficking; gender and trade; and women, peace and security. Born in Singapore, she received a B.A. and an M.A. from the University of Singapore and a doctorate in social sciences from Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. She has received several awards for leadership, including the UNA-Harvard Leadership Award, the Woman of Distinction Award from the UN-NGO Committee on the Status of Women, the Dag Hammarksjöld medal in 2004 and the NCRW “”Women Who Make a Difference”” Award in 2005.
Source: United Nations Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM


Adolfo Pérez Esquivel
Awarded the Noble Prize for Peace in 1980 for work in defence of Human Rights as head of the Justice and Peace Service Foundation (SERPAJ), which acted as an interlocutor between the previous socialist government and the terrorist group ETA in 1995 and in July 1997, he mediated in an ultimately fruitless attempt to stop ETA carrying out its threat to assassinate the PP Councillor Miguel Angel Blanco.
He has participated in numerous summits on human rights the most notable among which being the forum held in December 1998 in Gerona, where he spoke of the responsibility of the USA in the majority of armed conflicts and dictatorships then existing in Latin America and where he stated: “”one day they (the USA) will be held accountable in a court of law for these crimes “”.
More information: Justice and Peace Service Foundation (SERPAJ)


Pascoal Mocumbi
Dr Pascoal Mocumbi has been the High Representative of the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP) since March 2004. His mandate is to raise the visibility of the EDCTP and gain political support for it, particularly within Africa. He also contributes to the EDCTP’s fundraising activities. The Partnership aims at contributing towards reducing the burden caused by the major poverty-related diseases, as well as transferring empowerment to the developing world. Its goal is to accelerate the development of new clinical interventions in order to fight malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis. It seeks to build leadership in health research in developing countries, so that they will be able to diagnose and respond to their own needs.
Dr Mocumbi was Prime Minister of the Republic of Mozambique from 1994 to 2004. Prior to that, he headed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for eight years and the Ministry of Health for 6 years. He received his medical degree from the University of Lausanne, and practiced medicine as an obstetrician & gynaecologist in hospitals throughout Mozambique. Dr Mocumbi also has an active role in global health initiatives, serving on the board of the International Women’s Health Coalition (IWHC) and the Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV).


Nélida Piñón
Nélida Piñón is a Brazilian writer and journalist. She was born in Río de Janeiro in 1937. She has written full length and short fiction, theatre plays, criticism and essays. She did a degree in philosophy at the Universidad of Columbia, and is a lecturer at the University of Miami. She published her first novel Guide in 1961. Among her other major works are The Heat of Things and The Republic of Dreams. She has been awarded the Juan Rulfo prize for Latin-American literature. She is president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the first woman to hold the post. She was awarded the Prince of Asturias Prize for Letters in 2005.
More information: Brazilian Academy of Letters


Rajeev Sethi
Director of the Asian Heritage Foundation, a leading South Asian crafts designer, he is renowned internationally for his contribution to preserving and celebrating South Asia’s rich cultural heritage.


Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva is an internationally renowned activist and ecologist. Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, an independent institute dedicated to researching important ecological and social topics in strict co-operation with local communities. She is also one of the leaders of the International Forum on Globalization, together with Ralph Nader and Jeremy Rifkin. In 1991, she founded Navdanya, a national movement aimed at protecting the diversity and integrity of living resources, above all autochthonous seeds. She is one of the most challenging and dynamic thinkers in the environmental field. In 1993, she was given the Right Livelihood Award, also known as the alternative Nobel Prize for Peace. Vandana Shiva is the author of numerous books, among which are: Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge; Monocultures of the Mind; The Violence of the Green Revolution and Staying Alive. She is also joint editor of The Ecologist.


Suso de Toro
Galician writer, author of screenplays and essayist, he has written scripts for radio and television. Among his most notable work are: The Caixón Disaster (1983), Polaroid (1986) and Land Rover (1988). Amongst the awards he has won are the Galician Critics’ Prize (1988), the Spanish Critics’ Prize (1993 and 2000), The Blanco Amor Novelists’ Prize and the National Prize (2003).


Jorge Wilheim
Jorge Wilheim is a Brazilian architect and urbanist, living in São Paulo, where he started his current private practice in 1953. He designed São Paulo’s “”Parque Anhembi Exhibition Pavilion and Convention Hall”” and the Albert Einstein Jewish Hospital, as well as a long series of industrial, hospital, office and residential buildings. He designed or steered approx. twenty master plans for important Brazilian cities, including Curitiba and São Paulo, as well as new towns (Angelica). He also participated in the tender for Brasilia) and has been involved in large private developments. In the field of urban design he re-urbanized the Patio de Colégio (considered the birthplace of the city of San Paulo) and the downtown Anhangabaú valley. Mr. Wilheim is an international consultant and has also held several public posts, being responsible for innovations in the fields of consumer protection, public information services, alternative energy and fuels, environmental action, regional plans and development councils, civil emergencies, civil defence as well as the democratization of planning, and urban legislation. In 1994, he was appointed Deputy Secretary General of the Habitat II Conference (Istanbul, 1996) by the United Nations, being in charge of its technical concept, design and articulation. Mr. Wilheim is the author of nine books on planning, development and urban life. Since 2001, he has been São Paulo’s Planning Secretary, responsible for its new Strategic Master Plan.


Carles Duarte
Poet and linguist. His poetry, demonstrates the constant presence of the Mediterranean landscape and its cultural references. Its central themes are tenderness, dreaming and oblivion. His work has been translated into a number of languages and he has been awarded recognitions such as the Rosa Leveroni and the Vila de Martorell prizes.
He has worked with the sculptors Guido Dettoni and Manuel Cusachs and also with the singers Dounia Hédreville and Franca Masu. As a linguist, he has worked with professors Joan Coramines and Antoni M. Badia i Margarit. He has published books on historical linguistics and on the languages which are his specialities.
More information: The Association of Writers in Catalan (AELC)


Jim Garrison
Jim Garrison founded, and serves as President of, the Gorbachev Foundation/USA, which set the stage for the establishment, in 1995, of the State of the World Forum, a San Francisco based non-profit institution created to establish a global network of leaders dedicated to creating a more sustainable global civilization. With President Gorbachev as its Convening Chairman, the Forum convenes leaders from around the world and a spectrum of disciplines to its annual and regional conferences and has catalyzed the creation of several independent organizations. Garrison was born in China and grew up in Taiwan. After returning to the US, he began college at Pepperdine University (1969-70), attended the University of Tel Aviv in 1972, and received a B.A. (magna cum laude) in World History from Santa Clara University (1973). He then received a double M.T.S. in Christology and History of Religion from Harvard Divinity School (1975); and a Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology from Cambridge University (1982). Garrison published his first book: The Plutonium Culture (SCM) in 1980. This was followed by The Darkness of God: Theology After Hiroshima (SCM/1982); The Russian Threat: Myths and Realities (Gateway Books/ 1983); The New Diplomats (Resurgence Press/1984); Civilization and the Transformation of Power (Paraview Press/2000); and America As Empire: Global Leader or Rogue Power? (Barrett Koehler/2004). Jim Garrison also became President and Chairman of Wisdom University on February 2nd 2005. He remains President and Chairman of the State of the World Forum, and is a Founding Partner in Mosaic Networks, a business development company.


Richard Goldstone
Justice Goldstone is a member of the Constitutional Court of South Africa. He is the former Chief Prosecutor for the International Tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.
After graduating from the University of Witwatersrand with a B.A. (LL.B. cum laude) in 1962, he practiced as a Barrister in Johannesburg. In 1976, he was appointed Senior Counsel and in 1980 was made a Judge of the Transvaal Supreme Court. In 1989, he was appointed a Judge of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court. Since July 1994, he has been a Chief Justice in the Constitutional Court of South Africa.
From 1991 to 1994, he served as Chairperson of the Commission of Inquiry regarding Public Violence and Intimidation, which came to be known as the Goldstone Commission. He is also Chairperson of the Standing Advisory Committee on Company Law. From August 15th 1994 to September 1996, he served as the Chief Prosecutor of the United Nations International Criminal Tribunals on the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. During 1998, he was the chairperson of a high level group of international experts that met in Valencia, Spain to draft a Declaration of Human Duties and Responsibilities for the Director General of UNESCO (the Valencia Declaration). From August 1999 until December 2001, he was the chairperson of the International Independent Inquiry on Kosovo. In December 2001, he was appointed chairperson of the International Task Force on Terrorism established by the International Bar Association.
From 1985 to 2000, Justice Goldstone was President of the National Institute of Crime Prevention and the Rehabilitation of Offenders (NICRO). He is the chairperson of the Bradlow Foundation, a charitable educational trust, and heads the board of the Human Rights Institute of South Africa (HURISA).
His other responsibilities include being the Chancellor of the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, a member of the Board of its School of Law, a Governor of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and President of World ORT (an international technical and technology training organization). He was a member of the International Panel established in August 1997 by the Government of Argentina to monitor the Argentinean Inquiry to clarify Nazi activities in the Argentine Republic since 1938.
The many awards he has received locally and internationally include the International Human Rights Award of the American Bar Association (1994) and Honorary Doctorates of Law from the Universities of Cape Town, Witwatersrand, Natal, the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Notre Dame, Maryland University College, Wilfred Laurier in Ontario, the University of Glasgow, the Catholic University of Brabant in Tilburg, the Netherlands, the University of Calgary, and Emory University. He is an Honorary Bencher of the Inner Temple, London, an Honorary Fellow of St. Johns College, Cambridge, an Honorary Member of the Association of the Bar of New York, and a Fellow of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. He is a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a member of the faculty of the Salzburg Seminar in 1996, 1998 and 2001. From October to December 2001 he was a visiting professor at the School of Law of New York University.


Shashi Tharoor
In suspension while in public duties. Deputy General Secretary of Public Communications and Information of the United Nations.
Shashi Tharoor was born in London and grew up in Bombay and Calcuta. He received a degree in history from St. Stephen’s College, New Delhi, and later a Doctorate from Tufts University. Since 1978, he has been a career diplomat with the United Nations, posted to places such as Geneva, Singapore and New York, where he currently resides.
His work covers journalistic articles for Indian and English publications, essays on politics, history and literature, to collections of short stories. Apart from work in “Bollywood” he has written novels, including: The Great Indian Novel (1989) and Riot (2001). Tharoor has received several awards for his work, including, among others, the prestigious Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.


Amelia Valcárcel
President of the María Zambrano Spanish Philosophy Association
From 1993 to 1995, she was the councillor for culture of the Principality of Asturias. She is currently professor of Moral and Political Philosophy in the University of Oviedo and is a member of several research teams of the Higher Council for Scientific Research, as well as forming part of the editorial committees of numerous magazines and publishing houses. Notable among her works are Hegel and Ethics: Surmounting the “”Mere Moral”” (finalist for the National Essay Prize, 1989), Sex and Philosophy: From Fear to Equality (1991) (finalist for the National Essay Prize, 1994), Politics and Women (1997), Ethics versus Aesthetics (1998), Rebels (2000) and Ethics for a Global World (2002). Among her articles there are: “The Concept of Equality” (1994), “The Challenges of Feminism in the 21st Century” (2000), “Thinkers of the 20th Century” (2001) and “The Sense of Freedom” (2002).
Winner of the Rosa Manzano Prize 2006 for her essential contribution to feminist thought and for lifetime achievements in teaching Philosophy, and the role of women.


Desmond Tutu
Ordained as an Anglican priest in 1960, deacon of the Anglican cathedral of Johannesburg in 1975, and Bishop of Lesotho in 1977. A year later he became the first black general secretary of the Counsel of South African Churches. In 1984, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his pacific struggle against apartheid.
He was appointed the first black bishop of Johannesburg on the 13th November 1984 and in 1986 became the first black archbishop of Cape Town, which made him the head of the Anglican Church in South Africa.
He presided over the Truth and Reconciliation Commission from its founding in 1995, with the aim of learning the truth about, and judging the violations of human rights committed in South Africa during the thirty-three years of the apartheid regime.
Amongst other awards, he has been presented with the Gold Medal of the Catalan Parliament and is a Doctor Honoris Causa at the Pompeu Fabra University, UPF (2000).


Shabana Azmi
Has fought, both though cinema and theatre, as well as in parliament and the streets of the city, to defend the human rights of women.


Ricardo Lagos
Degree in Law from the University of Chile in 1960, Doctor in Economy from Duke University in North Carolina (USA.) in 1966.
Ricardo Lagos worked as a Professor of Economy in the School of Law at the University of Chile until 1972. Between 1971 and 1972, he occupied the position of Director at the University’s Institute of Law. During this decade he also served as Director of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences and as a visiting professor to the head of the department, William R. Kenan, of Latin American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the United States.
He was President of Chile.from 2000 to 2006.
Lagos has published the following works: La concentración del poder económico (1971, his doctoral thesis), Chile at the turning point (1979), Hacia la democracia (1987), Después de la transición (1993) and Mi idea de país (1999). He is also a member of the Círculo de Montevideo.
On March, 2006 Lagos inaugurated his own foundation called Democracia y Desarrollo (“Democracy and Development”) in Santiago. Also in 2006 he began a two-year term as President of the Club of Madrid.
More information: http://www.cidob.org/bios/castellano/lideres/l-028.htm


Ronald Inglehart
Ronald Inglehart is Professor, Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan. Inglehart’s ongoing research focuses on cultural change and its consequences.


Peter Eigen
Prof. Peter Eigen is a lawyer by training. He is the founder and Chair of the Advisory Council of Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organization promoting transparency and accountability in international development. Headquartered in Berlin, it supports National Chapters in more than 90 countries.
From 2005 he chaired the International Advisory Group of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). In 2006 he joined the African Progress Panel (APP).