Our Trustees

Our international Board of Trustees has 11 members, each with a specific interest and expertise in conflict-related issues and peacebuilding.

Richard Dales (Chair), UK
Rosemary Bechler, UK
Pumla Gobodo-Madikezela, South Africa
Kamal Hossain, Bangladesh
Paulina Lampsa, Greece
Craig McGilvray (Honourary Treasurer), UK
Frida Nokken, Norway
Brendan O'Leary, USA
Stephen Stedman, USA
Wigberto Tañada, The Philippines
Martin Woollacott, UK

Richard Dales (Chair of Trustees)
Sir Richard Dales is a retired member of HM Diplomatic Service, former High Commissioner to Zimbabwe and Ambassador to Norway. His distinguished diplomatic career took him to many countries, including Cameroon, Denmark and Bulgaria. From 1974-77 he was the Assistant Private Secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary and from 1995-98 he was the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Director for Africa and the Commonwealth.

Rosemary Bechler
Dr Rosemary Bechler is a freelance writer, journalist and editor; and holds a doctorate from Cambridge University. She has worked as International Editor of openDemocracy.org, editor of numerous British Council publications, as well as the New Politics Network’s journal ‘New Times’. From 1993 to 1995 she was Secretary of Security 2000, a project designed to frame debate on security in a post-Cold War society, and was the Secretary of the British Peace Assembly. She comes to Alert’s board from her role as Chairperson at Peaceworkers UK – an organisation she helped to establish.

Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela
Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela served on the Human Rights Violations Committee on South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and was responsible for coordinating the public hearings process for victims of human rights abuses in the Western Cape. She is currently senior consultant for the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation in Cape Town, and associate professor of psychology at the University of Cape Town, where she directs the new Narrative, Trauma, and Forgiveness Research Unit. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, A Human Being Died That Night: A Story of Forgiveness, which won the 2004 Alan Paton Award in South Africa, and the 2004 Christopher Award for adult non-fiction in the United States.

Kamal Hossain
Dr Kamal Hossain is a barrister, much of whose work involves international law, constitutional law, and human rights. He served the Government of Bangladesh as Minister of Law (1972-1973), Foreign Affairs (1973-1975), and Petroleum and Minerals (1974-1975). More recently, he has been the UN Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan (1998-2003) and is currently a Member of the UN Compensation Commission. At present he is Chairman, Advisory Council, Transparency International; Vice-Chairman, International Law Association; Chairman, Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs and Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trust.

Paulina Lampsa
Paulina Lampsa has been an advisor to George Papandreou – former Foreign Minister of Greece and leader of the opposition (PASOK) party – on conflict management issues since 1990. She is a member of the Central Committee of PASOK and of the party’s International Relations Department. She was an honorary candidate in the June 2004 elections for the European Parliament. Since 1997 she has been an active member of the Greek-Turkish Forum, an unofficial group that works on developing rapprochement between Greece and Turkey. She has participated in almost all four-party second track diplomacy initiatives on the Cyprus problem, involving Greek-Cypriots, Turkish-Cypriots, Greek and Turks.

Craig McGilvray (Honourary Treasurer)
Craig McGilvrary has substantial financial management and strategy experience, gained through his financial directorship of Stiell Limited 1998-2002 and Alfred McAlpine, the construction, facilities management and infrastructure providers, where he has been Managing Director, Corporate Division since 2003 and is responsible for leadership, strategy and growth of McAlpine’s Facilities Management Business.

Frida Nokken
Frida Nokken is currently the Special Advisor, Norwegian Ministry of Finance. Previously she worked as Secretary General of the Nordic Council from 1999 to 2007. The Council is a body for cooperation between the parliaments and governments in the Nordic countries. She was member of the Board of the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO) from 1992 until 2000, and was Chairwoman 1995-2000. She has degrees in political science from the Universities of Oslo and Bergen and made her career in management and leadership in the Norwegian government administration, including Director General of Customs and Excise from 1995 to 1999.

Brendan O'Leary
Brendan O'Leary is Director of the Solomon Asch Center for the Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict and Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He was educated at Oxford and the London School of Economics (LSE), and previously chaired the Department of Government at LSE. He has recognised expertise in national self-determination, power-sharing and electoral systems, and served as a constitutional advisor to the Kurdistan Government in Iraq. Prof O'Leary has previously acted as a constitutional advisor in Northern Ireland, Somalia, and South Africa and has advised the UN, the EU, the UK and US governments on conflicts in Europe and Asia. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of fifteen books, including The Northern Ireland Conflict, The Future of Kurdistan in Iraq and the up-coming Terror, Insurgency and the State, as well as over a hundred major articles and chapters in refereed journals and volumes.

Stephen Stedman
Dr Stephen J. Stedman is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, California. In 2003-4 he was the research director of the U.N. High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change. In 2004-5, following completion of the panel's report – A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility – he was a UN Assistant Secretary-General with the task of helping gain worldwide support in implementing the panel's recommendations. His writings focus on how civil wars end and on the architecture of the international system. Dr. Stedman joined Alert's Board of Trustees in 2007.

Wigberto Tañada
Former Senator Wigberto 'Bobby' E. Tañada is one of the leading lights of the human rights and democracy movements in the Philippines and in the Asia-Pacific region. As a senator, Mr Tañada chaired the Philippine Senate Committee on Justice and Human Rights and led the crafting of two landmark reports on the country's human rights situation since the Revolution of 1986. He is currently chair of the Philippine Working Group on the ASEAN Mechanism for Human Rights, and a convenor of the Asian Peace Alliance, a network of peace advocates, scholars, civil-society organisations and social-political movements from 15 Asia-Pacific countries. He also is chair of the Agrarian Justice Foundation, Inc. and is a lead convenor of the Gathering for Peace, the broadest Philippine coalition ever organised after 9/11 by peace and human rights advocates and president, since 1999, of the country's longest-serving NGO; the Philippine Rural Reconstruction Movement.

Martin Woollacott
Martin Woollacott has been a foreign affairs journalist at The Guardian newspaper for almost 40 years. He has reported from the Far East, covering the last years of the Vietnam War, the Bangladesh war and the Indian Emergency; the Middle East, covering the Iranian revolution and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon; as well as reporting as a travelling senior correspondent from Iraq, Bosnia and Sierra Leone during the interventions in those countries. Although retired from the newspaper since 2004, Mr. Woollacott continues to write regular columns on international affairs. He is a member of the board of Institute for War & Peace Reporting since 1993 and joined Alert's Board of Trustees in 2005.

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Last updated: May 2007