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Asian Center for Democratic Governance >> Strengthening Democratic Governance
A Report by the Asian Center for Democratic Governance 17 - 18 March 2002 Dhaka, Bangladesh |
Presenters(in alphabetical order) Manel Abeysekera was ambassador of Sri Lanka to Thailand and the permanent representative to UN ESCAP. She also was ambassador to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland; director general of political affairs in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs; chairperson of the Presidential Committee on Women; chairperson of the Sri Lanka National Chapter in the Coalition for Action on South Asian Cooperation.Faruq Achikzad is a board member of the Afghan-American Foundation, the Children of War, and the VirtualNation, as well as a senior analyst at the Nautilus Institute in Berkeley, California. He served with the United Nations Development Program from 1974-96 and held various positions, including chief of the Investment Development Office in New York, resident representative in the United Arab Emirates, and resident representative and resident coordinator in North Korea. Moudud Ahmed is the minister of law, justice, and parliamentary affairs in Bangladesh. He has served as vice president, prime minister, deputy prime minister, minister for communication, minister, and adviser to the president of Bangladesh. His publications include Democracy and the Challenge of Development; A Study of Politics and Military Interventions in Bangladesh; Bangladesh: Era of Sheikh Mujibar Rahman; and Bangladesh: Constitutional Quest for Autonomy. He has also been a visiting professor of international affairs at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. Jane Abell Coon was appointed United States ambassador to Bangladesh from 1981 to 1984 after serving as a foreign service officer in South Asia, including service in Pakistan, India, and Nepal. In Washington, she served as country director for Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh; she subsequently became deputy assistant secretary responsible for South Asian affairs, and worked on nuclear nonproliferation policy. Ambassador Coon is currently president of the Society of Woman Geographers. Manohar Singh Gill is the former chief of the National Election Commission of India. He joined the Indian Administrative Service in 1958 and served as a divisional commissioner in various divisions in Punjab. He was in the Election Commission from 1993 to 2001, and retired from the position of Chief Election Commissioner in 2001. His publications include Himalayan Wonderland, Folktales of Lahaul, and An Indian success story (Agriculture & Cooperatives in Punjab 1974-75). Selig S. Harrison is a senior scholar of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; director of the Century Foundation's Project on the United States and the Future of Korea; director of the National Security Project at the Center for International Policy. He served as South Asia bureau chief of The Washington Post from 1962-65. His publications include India: The Most Dangerous Decades (1960); Out of Afghanistan: The inside Story of the Soviet Withdrawal (1995); and Superpower Rivalry in the Indian Ocean: Indian and American Perspectives (1989). Manzoor Hassan, a lawyer by trade, is currently executive director of Transparency International Bangladesh. Kamal Hossain is a former minister of foreign affairs, law, petroleum, and minerals in Bangladesh. He is a former chairman of the constitution-drafting committee, the Constituent Assembly of Bangladesh, and the Commonwealth Human Rights Commission. He is currently chairman of the committee on legal aspects of sustainable development, the advisory council of Transparency International. Syeda Abida Hussain is former minister for population, welfare, and science AND technology with the government of Pakistan. She served as the ambassador of Pakistan to the United States from 1991-93. In addition, she has served as a member of the National Assembly; an advisor to the prime minister for population welfare; a member of the working committee of the Pakistan Muslim League; a federal minister for education, science and technology, culture, sports, tourism, and women's development in the interim government in 1996; and a federal minister for population, welfare, environment, local government and rural development, food, agriculture and livestock, women's development, social welfare, and special education. Ramin Jahanbegloo is currently a Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy in Washington, D.C. He has been a researcher at the French Institute for Iranian Studies and a fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard. In 1993, he taught at the Academy of Philosophy in Tehran. Prior to this, he was an adjunct professor in political philosophy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of 15 books in English, French, and Persian, including Conversations with Isaiah Berlin; Gandhi: Aux sources de la non-violence; Penser la nonviolence; Iran and Modernity; and many articles in Iranian, Indian, American, and French journals. M. Morshed Khan is foreign minister of Bangladesh. He served as special envoy of the prime minister with the rank of cabinet minister. He has been elected as a member of parliament to the Bangladesh Jatiya Sangshad four times. He was also chairman of the special committee on foreign affairs and of the Bangladesh Association of Banks, and is currently chairman of the Pacific Group of Industries, Pacific Bangladesh Telecom Ltd., and the Arab Bangladesh Bank. Dennis Kux, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, is researching the history of relations with India after the Cold War. He was also a Wilson Center fellow in 1996-97, when he worked on his recently published history of U.S.-Pakistan relations. His publications include The United States and Pakistan, 1947-2000: Disenchanted Allies (2001); "Pakistan: Flawed Not Failed State," in Foreign Policy Association Headline Series No. 322 (Summer 2001); and India and the United States, 1941-91: Estranged Democracies (1993). Andi A. Mallarangeng is chair of the policy committee and senior adviser of the Partnership for Governance Reform in Indonesia. He is also the chair of the department of political science at the Institute for Governmental Studies. He was a member of the Indonesian Election Commission before he joined the Ministry of Regional Autonomy as a senior adviser. He participated in drafting regional autonomy laws that were the basis for the regional autonomy policy in Indonesia, and also helped draft laws on political parties, elections, and the structure of the Indonesian parliament that became the legal foundation for the 1999 elections. Yasmeen Murshed is the chairperson of Scholastica Group of Companies. She is the chief executive officer and founder of the Scholastica School, and is a former lecturer at the Government College for Women in Islamabad. I.A. Rehman is director of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a nongovernmental organization in Lahore. Teresita Schaffer is director of the South Asia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. She joined CSIS in 1998 after serving 30 years with the U.S. Foreign Service, where she devoted most of her career to South Asia and to international economic issues. She served as deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia from 1989-92, U.S. foreign ambassador to Sri Lanka from 1992-95, and director of the Foreign Service Institute from 1995-97. Her publications include "Sri Lanka: Lessons from the 1995 Negotiations," in Creating Peace in Sri Lanka (1998), two studies on women in Bangladesh. Sushanta Sen is secretary general of the Asian Center for Democratic Governance. Since serving with the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry for two and half years, when he was attached to the Indian Engineering Association, he has been with CII for the last 33 years. In 1981, he was posted to London, in charge of CII UK's office (and European work). He was elevated to deputy director general of CII and is presently in charge of the various CII National Committees, such as defence, industrial relations, public policy, and the social development and community affairs (SDCA) council. Farooq Sobhan is president and chief executive of the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute. A career diplomat, after retirement he served as executive chairman of the Board of Investment and special envoy of the prime minister. He is a former foreign secretary of Bangladesh. Rehman Sobhan is executive chairman of the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), a nongovernmental organization established in 1993 to assist in building a sustainable democratic order by strengthening the role of civil society in the polity and the economy of Bangladesh. He began his career working on the faculty of economics at Dhaka University. He has served as member of the Bangladesh Planning Commission, in charge of the divisions of industry, power, and natural resources, and of physical infrastructure. He has written extensively on issues of governance and development. Peter Vancura was Project Assistant for the Asian Center for Democratic Governance at the National Endowment for Democracy from August 2001 through March 2002. He graduated from Oberlin College in 1999. Henry Shelton Wanasinghe is currently senior visiting fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies and director of the Commercial Bank of Ceylon Ltd. He is also member of the board of directors at the Centre for Policy Analysis, and of the board of governors at the Marga Institute. He was a member of the Sri Lankan public service from 1946-71, and has held more than 25 senior positions. Subsequently, he served with the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific from 1971-86. Mr. Wanasinghe has produced a number of publications, including Towards a Participatory Democracy in Sri Lanka: The Institutional Underpinning and The Changing Role of Government in Sri Lanka: The Implications for the Administrative System. Chitra Lekha Yadav is deputy speaker of Nepal's House of Representatives. Elected to parliament in May of 1999, she is the highest-ranking woman in Nepali politics and in the ruling Nepali Congress Party. She represents an agricultural district in southern Nepal. Prior to her election, she was an assistant lecturer of English at Tribhuvan University. She has been active in the women's movement in Nepal for several years, as well as in the student movement for democracy during the panchayat regime. She has participated in several international conferences on a variety of topics in the UK, Bangladesh, and the United States, and led a delegation of parliamentarians on a UNDP women's empowerment study mission to India. Gautam Adhikari, who served as coordinator of this conference, is senior consultant at the National Endowment for Democracy and director of the Asian Centre for Democratic Governance. He served as executive editor of The Times of India and was a senior consultant at the World Bank. He was a resident fellow at Harvard University's Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics, and Public Policy (1987-89) and a Shapiro Fellow at George Washington University's School for Media and Public Affairs (1998). In 1998-99, he served as project director of the NED's new global initiative, the World Movement for Democracy. His publications include Press Councils: The Indian Experience and India: The First 50 Years (editor). |
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