Kofi Annan was born in an aristocratic family of Ghanian tribal leaders. He undertook university studies in Ghana and continued his education at Swiss and US universities, including the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr Annan joined the UN in 1962,...
While living in exile in Japan and the US, Kim Dae-jung organised opposition against then South Korea’s dictator Park Chung-hee in the early 1970s. Many times imprisoned, he was sentenced to death, kidnapped, tortured and exiled from his home country. Despite his...
The organisation was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize for its pioneering humanitarian work on several continents. Medecins Sans Frontiers (in English: Doctors without Borders) was founded in 1971 in France, in the wake of reports on the fate of the population of the...
John Hume was a long-standing leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), the main political grouping of Northern Ireland Catholics. In the late 1960s Mr Hume was a key figure of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. In 1969 he was elected as an...
Jody Williams oversaw the growth of the ICBL to a point where the initiative included more than 1,000 NGOs in more than sixty countries. She was the chief strategist and spokesperson for the campaign. In recognition of her expertise, Ms Williams was invited to serve...
Shortly after being appointed the Apostolic Administrator of Dili, the capital of East Timor, in 1983, Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo denounced the brutal Indonesian occupation of the province. He was consecrated a Bishop in 1988. Despite numerous threats to his life,...
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