Mário Soares, lawyer, historian and politician - president of Portugal from 1986 to 1996 - was born in Lisbon on Dec. 7, 1924. He married Maria Barroso in 1949, has a daughter, a son and 3 grandchildren.

He graduated in Historical-Philosophical Sciences in 1951 and in Law in 1957 at Lisbon University. He taught at a private secondary school and was director of the Colégio Moderno, in Lisbon. He practised law for some years and during his exile in France he was “Chargé de Cours” at Vincennes University and at the Sorbonne. He was associate professor at the Faculty of Arts of Haute Bretagne (Rennes). More recently, he was guest professor in International Relations at the School of Economics of the University of Coimbra.

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Walther Lichem, Head of the Department for International Organisations in the Austrian Ministry for Foreign Affairs, with studies in law (Univ. of Graz, Austria) and political science (Univ. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna) started his professional career in 1966 at the United Nations Secretariat in New York in the field of international water resources with development cooperation missions to Ethiopia (1971), Argentina (1971-74) and to the Senegal River Development Organisation (1980). He was also Rapporteur on international river basins at the International Conference on Water Law (Caracas, 1976) and at the IVth World Water Conference (Buenos Aires, 1982).

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Mario Lubetkin, Italian-Uruguayan journalist, IPS Director General.

He served as correspondent for several Italian and Latin American print media, and as communications adviser for several U.N. agencies and regional integration organisations such as ALADI (Latin American Integration Association), CEFIR (Training Centre for Regional Integration), ARPEL (Latin American Oil Companies Association) and also for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (PNUD).

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Fifi Benaboud - Algerian. Divorced, 3 children. PhD in Political Science. Coordinator of Transmediterranean Program (" Transmed"), North-South Centre of the Council of Europe. Senior Advisor of Scientific Boards for several global organisations. Committed in International Cooperation for 30 years.

In charge of cooperation and partnership between the Council of Europe and the Mediterranean region; based on political dialogue, intercultural dialogue, human rights promotion, education and communication, mainly with Maghreb and Mashrek countries.

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Giovanni Spinelli is an Italian journalist, born in 1942. In the 1960s he was the national representative of Italian NGOs and worked as a political reporter.

From 1979 to 1985 he served as Mayor of the Municipality of Historic Central Rome, and in 1980, UNFPA commissioned him to organise the First World Conference of Mayors in Rome. He also worked as a consultant for UNESCO on the creation of a Francophone African news agency.

Between 1972 and 1979, he held the positions of Italy correspondent, Chief Editor and Secretary General of the IPS news agency. From 1986 to 1996 he again joined IPS and served as Secretary General. He is currently a Board member of the IPS International Association, responsible for legal and corporate affairs.

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René Castro has held various positions in the Costa Rican government: Minister of Environment and Energy, deputy-minister of the Ministry of Governance, National Director of the Ministry of Transportation and Public Works, President of the San José City Council. He served as chief of Costa Rican delegations to the international conventions on Biodiversity, Climatic Change and Ozone.

He holds a doctorate in Design from Harvard University, with an emphasis on Natural Resource Economics and Sustainable Development, and obtained a Master’s Degree from the same university. He graduated as a civil engineer from the University of Costa Rica.

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She is a prominent critic of Globalization and the economic policies of the most developed nations. Specifically, she has voiced opposition to the western countries subsidizing of their own cotton farmers, which leaves West African countries at a disadvantage in competing for space in Western markets. Traoré is one of the signatories, or members of the Group of Nineteen, of the Porto Alegre Manifesto drafted by the 2005 World Social Forum.

She defends Ahmed Sékou Touré, the former president of neighbour country Guinea, saying his bad reputation as a dictator and his attempts at exterminating the peul from the Futa Tooro in Guinea is due to propaganda and mis-information.

Halle Jorn Hanssen, 66, Norwegian. History, Sociology and Political Science make up his educational background. He is a member of the IPS International Board of Directors and the chairman of the Executive Committee. He has a long-standing relationship with IPS, dating back to 1983 when he was part of the launch of IPS in Norway. He has been a member of the Core Group representing Norway from 1984 to 1992 and also a member of other governing bodies within the IPS organisational structure.

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Thalif Deen, U.N. Bureau Chief and Regional Director, Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, has been covering the United Nations since the late 1970s. A former deputy news editor of the Sri Lanka Daily News, he was also a senior editorial writer on the Hong Kong Standard. He has been runner-up, and cited twice for "excellence in U.N. reporting", at the annual awards presentation of the U.N. Correspondents' Association. A former Information Officer at the U.N. Secretariat, and a one-time member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the U.N. General Assembly sessions, he is currently editor of the IPS UN Journal Terra Viva. Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, he has covered virtually every single major UN conference-- on population, human rights, environment, social development, globalization and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). A former Middle East military editor at Jane's Information Group in the U.S, he is a Fulbright-Hayes scholar with a Master's degree in Journalism from Columbia University, New York.

Henny Helmich (1956, Netherlands). Executive Director of National Commission for International Cooperation and Sustainable Development (NCDO), Amsterdam, since Jan. 1, 2001. He served as Administrator for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) External Co-operation Programme, Paris, from 1989 to 2000. He was the Executive Director of the Society for International Development at its international headquarters in Rome, 1986 to1989.

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Ramesh Jaura is a member of the Board of Directors of IPS International Association and Euro-Mediterranean coordinator of the IPS news agency. A journalist with an experience of nearly 39 years, most of which he has spent reporting on global communication and development affairs, Jaura is tasked with the planning and implementation of IPS's communication and outreach strategy. He is Editor-in-Chief of the bilingual KOMMUNIKATION GLOBAL – COMMUNICATE WORLDWIDE, a monthly magazine for international co-operation published by IPS in Germany. He is also publisher and chief editor of The Global South, a monthly Internet publication.

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Farai Samhungu has worked for several years in the area of development communications and media. She is currently the Regional Director for Inter Press Service in Africa, with responsibilities to manage the news service and related media and communication projects in Africa. Prior to joining IPS Samhungu was the Advocacy Programme Coordinator with the United Nations Population Fund in Zimbabwe. She also spent nine years with Intermediate Technology Development Group, an international technology development organisation. Samhungu holds an MA in Mass Communications from the University of Leicester, UK.

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Govin Reddy is a media consultant and Professor Extraordinaire in the Department of Journalism, Stellenbosch University. Prof. Reddy has held a number of senior management and executive positions in media organizations. These include Head of the English Service of IPS, Editor of Africa South magazine, Chief Executive of SABC Radio, Chief Executive of the Mail & Guardian newspaper and Director of the Media Leadership Institute at Rhodes University. He is a past President of the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association and serves on the Boards of a number of media organizations in South Africa.

Johanna Son, the Regional Director for IPS Asia-Pacific, has been with the news agency since 1994.

A Philippine national, Johanna graduated with a journalism degree from the University of the Philippines, magna cum laude, and has covered the diplomatic and political beats in her country. She joined IPS as regional correspondent for the Asia-Pacific and became regional editor in 1997. She was appointed concurrent regional director in 1998, and oversaw the transfer of the regional headquarters from Manila to Bangkok in late 1999.

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