Leadership
Founder
Glenn D. Paige (1929-2017)
Hawai’i
Founder and past Chair of the Center for Global Nonkilling. Korean War veteran. Author of Nonkilling Global Political Science (2002; 3rd ed. 2009), The Scientific Study of Political Leadership (1977), co-editor of Nonkilling Korea: Six Culture Exploration (2012). Educated at Phillips Exeter Academy (1947), Princeton University (A.B. politics, 1955), Harvard University (A.M. East Asian studies, 1957), PhD Northwestern University, political science 1959), and by colleagues around the world.
Honorary Sponsors
Máiread Corrigan Maguire
Northern Ireland
Nobel Peace Laureate (1976), Máiread is Honorary President and co-founder, with Betty Williams, of the Community of Peace People, an organization which attempts to encourage a peaceful resolution of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. She also was one of the founders of The Nobel Women’s Initiative and is member of the Honorary board of the International Coalition for the Decade of the culture of Peace and Nonviolence.
Óscar Arias
Costa Rica
Nobel Peace Laureate (1987), Dr. Óscar Arias was President of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2010, having been instrumental in the promotion of peace agreements throughout Central America. A member of Collegium International, he was also elected to the Board of Directors of the International Criminal Court’s Trust Fund for Victims and of the Board of Trustees of Economists for Peace and Security. Besides the Nobel Peace Prize, he is also recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism and over fifty honorary degrees, including doctorates from Harvard and Princeton universities.
Juan Esteban Aristizábal Vásquez (“Juanes”)
Colombia
Juanes is a Colombian musician and activist from Medellín, having sold millions of albums and won several Grammy awards. In 2006 he established the Mi Sangre Foundation to help victims of anti-personnel mines. He was honored at the annual benefit gala for Sir Paul McCartney’s Adopt-A-Minefield for his work as a Goodwill Ambassador for United for Colombia, a non-profit organization that raises awareness about the impact of land mines in Colombia. He organized the first “Peace Without Borders” concert as a response to the 2008 Andean diplomatic crisis on the Colombia-Venezuela border. In 2009 the second “Peace Without Borders” concert was held in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución.
Federico Mayor Zaragoza
Spain
Dr. Mayor Zaragoza is President of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, Co-President for the UN High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations, member of the Honorary Board of the International Coalition for the Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence and Honorary Chairman of the Académie de la Paix. He served as Director-General of UNESCO from 1987 to 1999, establishing the Culture of Peace Program and fostering the adoption of the Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. As a biochemist he was also one of the founders of the 1986 Seville Statement on Violence.
Neelakanta Radhakrishnan
India
Gandhian scholar and activist, Professor Radhakrishnan organized many university and village shantisena and trained more than 5,000 young volunteers over 20 years. He took up assignment under the Government of India as Director of Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, also establishing the Indian Council of Gandhian Studies; Gandhi Media Centre; G. Ramachandran Institute of Nonviolence and Shantisena; and Missionaries of Nonviolence Foundation India. He has authored over 50 books.
Bernard Lafayette, Jr.
United States
The Rev. Dr. Lafayette, an ordained minister, is a longtime civil rights activist, organizer, and an authority on nonviolent social change. He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960, and he was a core leader of the civil rights movement in Nashville, TN, in 1960 and in Selma, AL, in 1965. He directed the Alabama Voter Registration Project in 1962, and he was appointed by Martin Luther King, Jr. to be national program administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and national coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. He is Distinguished Senior Scholar-in-Residence at Candler School of Theology, Emory University.
Ilya Prigogine (In memoriam)
Russia/Belgium
Nobel Chemistry Laureate (1977), Prigogine is widely acknowledged for his work on dissipative structures and their role in thermodynamic systems. He became professor at the Free University of Brussels in 1950, were he also became director of the International Solvay Institute. He was Ashbel Smith Professor of Physics and Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, were he co-founded in 1967 the Center for Complex Quantum Systems. Back in Belgium, he also directed the Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics. He received awards such as the Francqui Prize for Exact Sciences (1955) or the Rumford Medal (1976), and was made Viscount by the King of the Belgians.
Robert Muller (In memoriam)
Belgium
Dr. Muller devoted 40 years working for peace at the United Nations, reaching the position of Assistant-Secretary-General. He created a World Core Curriculum and is known throughout the world as the “father of global education.” There are 29 Robert Muller schools around the world with more being established each year. The World Core Curriculum earned him the UNESCO Peace Education Prize in 1989. Dr. Muller is also Co-Founder and Chancellor Emeritus of the University for Peace created by the United Nations in demilitarized Costa Rica.
A. T. Ariyaratne (In memoriam)
Sri Lanka
Dr. Ariyaratne is the founder and president of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka, a non-profit organization that involves millions of people in Gandhian nonviolence and rural development. Ariyaratne has won international recognition that includes the Gandhi, Niwana, Sushil Kumar, and Jamnalal Bajaj peace awards. Since 2015 he is one of the 10 members of Sri Lankas’s Constitutional Council. Born in 1931, he holds a doctor of humanities degree, a doctor of letters degree (honorary) and a bachelor of arts in economics, Sinhala and education.
Jose V. Abueva (In memoriam)
Philippines
Founding President, Kalayaan College at Quezon City; Former President and Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Public Administration, University of the Philippines; Former Secretary of the UN University; Chairman, Aurora Aragon Quezon Peace Foundation; Trustee of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and the Foundation for Worldwide People Power.
Chaiwat Satha-Anand (In memoriam)
Thailand
Chaiwat was Professor of Political Science at at Thammasat University in Bangkok and was a Senior Research Scholar with the Thailand Research Fund. He also served as Vice-President of the Strategic Nonviolence Committee, National Research Council of Thailand; Vice-President of the Foundation for Children Development; and Director of the Peace Information Center. He served as Action-Policy Team Leader of the CGNK between 2008 and 2011 and as Member of its Governing Council.
Governing Council
Anoop Swarup (Chair)
India
Founder Chairman of the Global Knowledge Alliance; Vice Chancellor, Jagran Lakecity University; Commissioner at the Government of India; Executive Director of the Nehru Yuva Kendra Scheme; UNSC Expert at United Nations and GEO Reviewer IPCC (UNEP 2007). Author of Regional Economics Engagement and the Free Trade Agreements – Analytical Insights and Policy Options (2010) and The world of money laundering financial crimes and commercial frauds (2004).
Glenda H. Paige (Secretary)
Hawai’i
Glenda is the founding Secretary of the Center of Global Nonviolence (1994-2007). She assisted the CGNV president and later the CGNK chair in research and conferences in 20 countries, including Haiti, China and Russia, Colombia, India and Pakistan, Japan, Jordan, North and South Korea, Sri Lanka, and the UK. She represented the CGNK as Friend of the 9th Nobel Peace Laureates’ World Summit in Paris (2008), and also participated in the Summits in Rome (2007), Berlin (2009) and Hiroshima (2010). She is a liberal arts graduate of the University of Hawai‘i, retired as a McDonald’s Quality Management Business Consultant, and served as Workflow Systems Manager in the Office of the Governor of Hawaii (2010-2014).
Maorong Jiang (Treasurer)
China/USA
Maorong is Associate Professor and Director of the Asian World Center at Creighton University, Nebraska. He teaches at the Department of History and the Department of Political Science and International Relations, also running the East-West Studies program. Trained as a professional military officer in China’s People’s Liberation Army, he holds a B.A. in English from the Military Institute of International Relations in China, an M.A. in Asian Religion and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Lou Ann Ha’aheo Guanson
Hawai’i
Ha’aheo is a leader, teacher, researcher, and advocate for the creation of a culture of peace and nonviolence for the world. Presently, she serves as the Director of the Pacific Justice and Reconciliation, Honolulu. Dr. Guanson also teaches at the University of Hawaii Manoa for the Spark M. Matsunaga Institute for Peace and the School of Social Work. She has been associated with the Institute for Peace since its inception, including past service as its Director and Associate Professor.
Bill (Balwant) Bhaneja
Canada
Following his foreign service career in Canada, he was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Ottawa. He has chaired nonkilling panels at the European Consortium for Political Research in Budapest (2005) and at the IPSA World Political Science Congress, Santiago de Chile (2009). He also co-chaired with Mairead Maguire the First Global Nonkilling Leadership Forum, in Honolulu, Hawaii (2007). He is a member of the Canadian Pugwash Group, Science for Peace, Civilian Peace Service Canada and co-founder of the Canadian Department of Peace Initiative. Publications include Science and Government: Nehru Era and Quest for Gandhi: A Nonkilling Journey.
Christina Kemmer
Hawai’i
Christina served as President of Communications Pacific where she founded in 1997 the practice of Community Building. Earlier she headed the Office of Waikiki Development for the City and County of Honolulu and was president of Waikiki Improvement Association. Christina recently led a project in a statewide effort to create partnerships to rescue and restore victims of human trafficking as well as consulted for a major health care system as a resource for its community building efforts to provide access to quality health care in West Oahu and Hawai`i Island. She is a graduate of Loyola University (Chicago, Illinois).
Director
Joám Evans Pim (Director)
Galiza
Joám earned his Ph.D. in Social Sciences at Åbo Akademi University after following graduate and undergraduate studies in Journalism, Anthropology and Politics (Peace Studies). He has served different roles at CGNK since 2008 and also teaches seasonally at Jaume I University in Castelló and Åbo Akademi University in Vasa, were he is Adjunct Professor (Docent) in Developmental Psychology with a specialization in Peace and Conflict Research. Edited volumes include Global Nonkilling Leadership (2008, with Glenn Paige), Toward a Nonkilling Paradigm (2009), Nonkilling Societies (2010), Engineering Nonkilling (2011), Nonkilling Psychology (2012, with Dan Christie), Nonkilling Futures (2012, with Jim Dator) and Nonkilling Security and the State (2013).
Contact: jevans [at] nonkilling.org
UN Representatives
Christophe Barbey (Representative at the United Nations in Geneva)
Switzerland
Chris is an “Eirenologist”, a lawyer (Master of law, University of Fribourg) and a poet. Eirene was the Greek word for peace, he is a “peace activator”. He does peace research and is one of the founders of APRED, participative institute for the progress of peace where he presently works as a coordinator and head of research. He works on new forms of democracy, on the inclusion of peace, peace policies and of the human right to peace in constitutions and legal texts. Since 1989, he has also been studying and monitoring the 26 existing countries without armies. He also works as a lawyer and a facilitator and in a legal clinic for soldiers and person doing civil service (www.infodroit.ch).
Contact: info [at] nonkilling.org
Joshua Cooper (Representative at the United Nations in New York)
Hawai’i
Joshua is an academic, advocate, author, analyst and activist based in Hawai’i, where he serves as Director of the Hawai’i Institute for Human Rights and lecturer at the University of Hawai’i. As a human rights advocate, he is engaged in global and regional mechanisms guaranteeing fundamental freedoms. He also serves as Co-Chair of the US Human Rights Network Universal Periodic Review Task Force and is an instructor for the University of New South Wales Diplomacy Training Program. Joshua advises major groups and other stakeholders in the UN Voluntary National Reviews for the High Level Political Forum and is mobilizing subnational initiatives such as Voluntary Local Reviews spearheaded by cities.
Contact: info [at] nonkilling.org
Elina Viitasaari (United Nations Gender Focal Point)
Finland
Elina has focused on Psychology and Criminal Justice as her undergraduate studies and on Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research at the graduate level. Human rights, peace and security are subjects very close to her heart, and she has been actively promoting women’s rights and gender equality both locally in Finland and globally, having represented CGNK at the Commission on the Status of Women. Her work has mainly concentrated on gender-based violence and as a chairwoman of the local UN Women, she has organized many events and fundraisers to end the violence against women and girls.
Advisers
Thomas A. Fee (Senior Adviser)
USA
Tom is is a mediator, facilitator, leadership coach and retired attorney. He served on the CGNK leadership team between 2008 and 2011 and previously on the Board of CGNV (2004-2006). He has also served as Director of the Spark M. Matsunaga Center for Peace and Conflict Resolution at the University of Hawai’i and in the National Institute for Dispute Resolution. He studied Comparative Religion at Rutgers College (B.A. magna cum laude) and earned a law degree (J.D.) from Rutgers University School of Law, Newark.
Contact: info [at] nonkilling.org
Luis Javier Botero (Latin America Regional Adviser)
Colombia
Luis was Nonviolence Adviser to the Governor of Antioquia (Colombia) for 7 years and led the State’s Nonviolence Program between 2001 and 2007. He also organized the 5th International Nonviolence Conference (Medellín, 2002) and was the first Level II and III Nonviolence trainer in Latin America. He served as CGNK Education and Training Team Leader (2008-11), with responsibility over the Global Nonkilling Leadership Academy, and had previously collaborated with the Strategic Planning Committee formed in 2008. First recipient of the “Gene Sharp Nonviolence Activist Award”, Bethlehem, 2005.
Contact: lbotero [at] nonkilling.org
Center for Global Nonkilling Incorporators / Center for Global Nonviolence (1994-2008) Board of Directors
From left to right: Glenn D. Paige (President); Lou Ann Ha’aheo Guanson (Vice-President), past vice-president, International Fellowship of Reconciliation, specialist on creativity and leadership for nonviolent social change; Glenda H. Paige (Secretary), management consultant, retired quality manager; Larry R. Cross (Treasurer), president Economics Institute, past academic vice-president, Japan-America Institute of Management Science, past associate dean, College of Business, University of Hawai`i; Ramon Lopez-Reyes (Director), Lt. Col. Inf. (Ret.), scholar-psychotherapist, founder of the International Center for Study and Promotion of Zones of Peace in the World.; George Simson (Director), professor emeritus of English, University of Hawai’i, founder of the interdisciplinary journal Biography and of the Center for Biographical Research.