“Conflict and Peace in Colombia: Consequences and Perspectives for the Future”
Biographies of Participants
Cynthia J. Arnson is deputy director of the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is editor of Comparative Peace Processes in Latin America (Woodrow Wilson Center Press and Stanford University Press, 1999), author of Crossroads: Congress, the President, and Central America, 1976-1993 (Penn State Press, 1993), and co-author of State of War: Political Violence and Counterinsurgency in Colombia (Human Rights Watch/Americas, 1993, and Tercer Mundo Editores, 1994). Arnson is a member of the editorial advisory board of Foreign Affairs en Español and a member of the advisory board of Human Rights Watch/Americas. Prior to joining the Wilson Center, Arnson was associate director of Human Rights Watch/Americas, with responsibility for Colombia, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. She has a Ph.D. in international relations from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Edgar Forero is special advisor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Bogotá office. He has held numerous senior positions dealing with issues of refugees and the internally displaced, serving as director of the World Bank-Red de Solidaridad Social Alianza Project and as deputy director of the Red de Solidaridad Social, a Colombian government agency. In addition to consultancies with the UNHCR and World Bank, he has served as advisor to the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program, and the Sistema Económico Latinoamericano (SELA), among others. Trained in development and urban studies, he is the author of five books and over a hundred articles on economics, regional and urban development, and social policy.
Pilar Gaitán Pavía is counselor to the Permanent Mission of Colombia to the Organization of American States, and former Washington representative of Fundación Ideas para la Paz. She has held numerous senior positions in several Colombian administrations, including director of the human rights secretariat, Ministry of Defense; vice-minister of foreign relations; director of international affairs, Office of the Attorney General; and member of the United Nations Human Rights Commission. She has undergraduate and graduate degrees in political science from the Universidad de los Andes and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and has served as professor and researcher at the Universidad Externado de Colombia, the Universidad de los Andes, and the Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Relaciones Internacionales (IEPRI) of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia.
Verónica Gómez is the human rights specialist with the OAS Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with responsibility for Colombia. In that capacity, she has organized and conducted the Commission’s on-site visits to Colombia from 2000-2003. Gómez is legal advisor of the Inter-American Commission on cases before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, based in Costa Rica. A former consultant for the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL), she has written frequently for scholarly publications on questions of human rights and international law. Gómez holds a law degree from the Universidad de Buenos Aires and an LLM from the University of Nottingham, UK, where she is also a Ph.D. candidate.
Hernando Gómez Buendía is coordinator for the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) of the Human Development Report, published in September 2003. The author or editor of 37 books published in Canada, Colombia, Japan, and the United States, he has taught at numerous universities in Colombia, the United States, and Europe, including the Universidad Javeriana, the Universidad de los Andes, the University of Wisconsin (Madison), and the World Institute for Development Economics Research in Helsinki. He is a columnist and editorial advisor for the weekly news magazine Semana, as well as other publications in Colombia and Latin America. Gómez Buendía holds an M.S. in economics and a Ph.D. in sociology, and is a former general secretary of Colombia’s Liberal Party.
Rodrigo Gutiérrez Duque is founder and president of the executive committee of Fundación Ideas para la Paz, a think-tank on conflict and peace issues based in Bogotá. He currently serves as a member of the board of trustees of the Universidad de los Andes and a member of the board of directors of Fedesarrollo, a research center. Gutiérrez Duque is the former chairman and president of the Corona Organization, S.A., as well as the former president of the Corona Foundation. He has served in numerous roles in public and private life, including as former president of the board of directors of the National Association of Industrialists (ANDI), Bogotá chapter, and a member of the working group that created the Colombian savings and loan system. An economist by training, he holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from Colombian, U.S., and French universities.
Eduardo Lora is the principal advisor of the research department of the Inter-American Development Bank. Since joining the Inter-American Development Bank in 1996, Mr. Lora has served as the coordinator of the Bank´s annual report, Economic and Social Progress in Latin America. His individual contributions to this report have included studies on structural reforms, income inequality, economic growth and social policies. He holds an M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics. He has been associate member of Saint Anthony’s College of Oxford University, editor of Coyuntura Económica, and executive director of Fedesarrollo, a leading policy research institution. His numerous publications include an economic statistics textbook which has been reprinted more than 10 times, and an introductory textbook on the Colombian economy, now in its third edition. In recognition of his contributions, on its hundredth anniversary, the London School of Economics named him as “Distinguished Alumnus.”
Carl E. Meacham, advises the Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC), Senator Richard Lugar, on U.S. policy to the Western Hemisphere. Prior to working for the SFRC, Meacham was senior advisor for foreign relations and energy issues to Senator Charles Schumer from New York. Before that he was a legislative assistant for Senator Harry Reid from Nevada. Previously he served as Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of Commerce Robert L. Mallett, where he advised the Deputy Secretary on matters of commercial diplomacy and also organized domestic and international trade missions. Meacham holds an M.P.A. from Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs; an M.A.I.D. from American University, School of International Service; and a B.A. in Political Science and Spanish Literature from the University of Albany, State University of New York.
Caroline Moser is a senior research associate, Overseas Development Institute in London and adjunct professor, New School University in New York. A social anthropologist, her doctoral research was on urban poverty in Bogotá. Other research has focused on gender, social capital, household vulnerability/coping strategies, human rights and participatory urban appraisals of urban violence and exclusion in Colombia, Guatemala and Jamaica. From 1990-2000 she worked at the World Bank, first in the urban development division, and then as lead specialist, social development, in the Latin American Department, where she managed the first sector study on violence in Colombia and set up two Colombian trust fund projects. Previously she was lecturer in social planning in developing countries, London School of Economics. She is currently providing technical support to the Colombian Women’s Initiative for Peace Project. Recent violence related publications include (co-editor with F. Clark) Victims, Perpetrators or Actors: Gender, Armed Conflict and Political Violence (Zed, 2000), and (with C. McIwaine) Encounters with Violence in Latin America: Urban Poor Perceptions from Colombia and Guatemala (Routledge, 2003).
Marco Palacios is rector of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Prior to re-assuming this post in 2003, he was professor, researcher, and general academic coordinator at Mexico’s prestigious El Colegio de México. An historian with a Ph.D. from Oxford University, he is the author or editor of a dozen books on Colombian political, economic, and social history, including most recently (with Frank Safford) Colombia: Fragmented Land, Divided Society (Oxford, 2001). He has taught at numerous universities in Colombia and abroad, including the Universidad de los Andes, the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Duke University, the University of Chicago, and Oxford University. Palacios serves on the editorial advisory board of several scholarly journals on Latin American history and politics, as well as the board of several institutions of higher learning, including the Latin American Doctoral Academic Committee of the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset, Madrid.
Rodrigo Pardo is the deputy director of El Tiempo, Colombia’s pre-eminent news daily, and is the former director of the Colombian daily El Espectador. Pardo has served in a number of senior government posts, including minister of foreign relations during the administration of President Ernesto Samper, ambassador to Venezuela, and ambassador to France. He is a member of the board of directors of the Universidad de los Andes, where he also serves as professor of international politics, department of political science. The author of numerous publications on Colombian and international politics, Pardo received undergraduate and graduate degrees in economics and international relations from the Universidad de los Andes and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
Alfredo Rangel Suárez is director of the Fundación Seguridad y Democracia, an independent research organization specializing in defense and security issues. One of Colombia’s leading specialists in security affairs, he served as a presidential adviser for national security during the administration of President César Gaviria and has continued as a consultant on security matters for the Colombian Ministry of Defense as well as the United Nations. Rangel writes a regular column for the Bogotá daily, El Tiempo, and has been a professor and researcher at the Universidad de los Andes. He is the author of dozens of articles and essays on the armed conflict in Colombia, including most recently Guerra Insurgente (2001), a comparative study of insurgencies in Latin America and Asia, as well as Reconocer la Guerra para Construir la Paz (1999) and Colombia: Guerra en el Fin de Siglo (1998). He holds a degree in economics from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and an M.A. in political science from the Universidad de los Andes.
Luis Carlos Restrepo Ramírez has served as Colombia’s High Commissioner for Peace since August 2002. Named to that post by President Álvaro Uribe, he is the foremost Colombian government official charged with seeking a negotiated settlement of Colombia’s internal armed conflict and designing related reconciliation policies. Previously, he served as general coordinator of the Citizens’ Mandate for Peace, a civil society initiative that in 1997 garnered 10 million votes in favor of a peaceful resolution of the conflict and respect for the non-combatant civilian population. A psychiatrist by training, Dr. Restrepo has served as professor of clinical psychology at the Universidad Javeriana, and has devoted the bulk of his career to the prevention of drug addiction and associated communal violence. He has served as consultant to the United Nations Drug Control Program, the Colombian Presidential Advisory for Medellín, and the rector’s office of the Universidad Nacional, and is the author of numerous works on drug addiction, mental health, and human ecology.
Juan Manuel Santos is founder and president of the Fundación Buengobierno (Good Government Foundation), a non-profit organization that seeks to improve the performance of governmental institutions and policies in Colombia. His long and distinguished record in public service includes posts as minister of foreign trade during the administration of President César Gaviria and finance minister during the administration of President Andrés Pastrana. Santos begun his professional career at the Colombian National Federation of Coffee Growers, and for nine years headed the Colombian delegation to the International Coffee Organization in London. Santos has held both Fulbright and Neiman fellowships, and has served as deputy director and president of the editorial board of the Colombian daily, El Tiempo and as vice-president of the Inter-American Press Society’s Commission on Press Freedom. A former president of the VII United Nations’ Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and former president of the Economic Conference for Latin America (ECLA), Santos has pursued undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Kansas, the London School of Economics, and Harvard University.
Michael Shifter is vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based forum on Western Hemisphere affairs. Since 1993, Mr. Shifter has been adjunct professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where he teaches Latin American politics. Mr. Shifter writes and talks widely on U.S.-Latin American relations and hemispheric affairs. His recent articles have appeared in major U.S. and Latin American publications such as The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Journal of Democracy, Harvard International Review, Clarín, O Estado de S. Paulo, and Cambio. He is also on the editorial board of Foreign Affairs en Español and is a contributing editor to Current History. Since 1996, he has frequently testified before Congress about U.S. policy towards Latin America. Prior to joining the Inter-American Dialogue, Mr. Shifter directed the Latin American and Caribbean program at the National Endowment for Democracy and, before that, the Ford Foundation’s governance and human rights program in the Andean region and Southern Cone where he was based in Lima, Peru, and subsequently, in Santiago, Chile.
Christopher Welna is associate director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame and director of the Latin American Studies Program at Notre Dame. He taught previously in the Sanford Institute for Public Policy at Duke University, and served as program officer with the Ford Foundation in the Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro offices. His most recent publication is a co-edited volume, with Scott Mainwaring, on Democratic Accountability in Latin America (Oxford University Press, 2003). His volume on Colombia: Peace, Democracy and Human Rights, co-edited with Gustavo Gallon, is forthcoming in 2004. He holds an M.A. in public and international affairs, as well as in urban and regional planning from Princeton University and earned his Ph.D. in political science at Duke University.