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• Respect and Understanding Commission members - Summary biographies

Respect and Understanding Commission members - Summary biographies

Professor Amartya Sen (Chairperson, India) Lamont University Professor, and Professor of Economics and Philosophy, at Harvard University and was until recently the Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. Among the awards he has received are the “Bharat Ratna” (the highest honour awarded by the President of India); the Senator Giovanni Agnelli International Prize in Ethics and the Nobel Prize in Economics; he has also received honorary doctorates from major universities in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Amartya Sen has published extensively, and include most notably: Development as Freedom (1999), and Rationality and Freedom (2002), The Argumentative Indian (2005); and Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2006).

Rt Hon Lord John Alderdice (United Kingdom) is a Northern Ireland politician, a medical doctor and Ireland’s first Consultant Psychotherapist. He was Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly 1998-2004, leader of the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland and sits in the UK’s House of Lords as a Liberal Democrat. He led the Alliance Delegation to the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation at Dublin Castle and the Northern Ireland Multiparty Talks, and was a member of the Northern Ireland Forum which agreed the Good Friday Peace Agreement. In September 1999, he was awarded the Medal of Excellence of the College of Physicians of Peru for his work in the field of psychoanalysis and conflict resolution.

Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah (Ghana) is Laurence S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University. He has published widely in African and African-American literary and cultural studies, and in 1992, Oxford University Press published In My Father's House, which deals, in part, with the role of African and African-American intellectuals in shaping contemporary African cultural life. His most recent publications include The Ethics of Identity (2004) and Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006).

Rt. Hon. Adrienne Clarkson (Canada) is an accomplished journalist and until 2005 she served as the 26th Governor General of Canada: she was the first Chinese Canadian and second woman to hold this position. She was also the first (and thus far only) Governor General to be awarded the Order of Canada prior to taking office. Clarkson is well known for her work in broadcasting, having hosted and produced several shows for the CBC between 1964-1982.

Dr Noeleen Heyzer (Singapore) 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 to promote women's empowerment and gender equality. Previously, a policy adviser to Asian governments, in 1994-95 she played a key role in the preparatory process for the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, including organizing 1000 NGOs in the Asia Pacific region to develop the first ever NGO Action Plan. Dr. Heyzer has been a founding member of numerous regional and international women's networks and has received several awards for leadership including the Dag Hammarksjold medal in 2004.

Dr Kamal Hossain (Bangladesh) is a former Minister of Law and former Minister of Foreign Affairs in Bangladesh and is credited with being one of the principal authors of his country’s National Constitution. Internationally he has championed human rights, recently highlighting the plight of refugees in Afghanistan and campaigning for international aid. Formerly the UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, and currently a member of the UN Compensation Commission, he is a world-renowned jurist sought for his legal expertise.

Elaine Sihoatani Howard (Tonga) is the Executive Director of Tonga National Youth Congress (Nuku’alofa, Tonga), and Chairperson of the Commonwealth Youth Programme - South Pacific Regional Youth Caucus (RYC) (Honiara, Solomon Islands). She was awarded: Winner - Best Original Research Presentation at International Development Conference of New Zealand 2004, and Overall University Winner, University of Auckland Postgraduate Research Exposition 2004.

Professor Wangari Muta Maathai (Kenya) is the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize 2004. An academic, Professor Maathai's role as an environmental campaigner began in 1977 when she formed an organization - primarily of women - known as the Green Belt Movement – which mobilized poor women to plant some 30 million trees across Africa. Having been elected to parliament with an overwhelming 98% of the vote in 2002, Professor Wangari Maathai was subsequently appointed by the president, as Assistant Minister for Environment, Natural Resources and Wildlife in Kenya's ninth parliament.

The Honourable Ralston Milton Nettleford OM (Jamaica) better known as Rex Nettleford is a Jamaican scholar, social critic and choreographer. In 1963 he founded the National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica, an ensemble which under his direction did much to incorporate traditional Jamaican music and dance into a formal balletic repertoire. Beginning with the collection of essays Mirror, Mirror: Race, Identity and Protest in Jamaica published in 1969 and his editing and compiling of the speeches and writings of Norman Manley, Manley and the New Jamaica, in 1971, Nettleford established himself as a serious public historian and social critic. In 1975, the Jamaican state recognized his cultural and scholarly achievements by awarding him the Order of Merit. In 1996, he became Vice-Chancellor of the UWI, and held that office until 2004.

Lucy Turnbull (Australia) is an Australian politician, businesswoman and former Lord Mayor of Sydney. Lucy Turnbull is a member of the board of governors of the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research, a respiratory and sleep research institute. She is also a director of investment bank Turnbull & Partners Pty Ltd and is chairman of WebCentral Group Ltd, a web hosting company. Her background is in commercial law and investment banking.