Four years after the publication of the report of the UN High Level Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), King’s College London receives the chair of the Panel, President José Ramos Horta, to discuss the current state of UN Peace Operations. His keynote will be followed by comments from CSDRG’s Ian Martin, former member of HIPPO and Head of UNSMIL in Libya, and from Prof. Funmi Olonisakin, Vice-President and Vice-Principal International of KCL and member of the Advisor Group of Experts on the Review of the UN Peacebuilding Architecture.

President José Ramos Horta

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Dr. José Ramos-Horta, is known internationally as a dedicated advocate for the people of Timor-Leste, a highly skilled diplomat, negotiator, and peace maker. In 1996, José Ramos-Horta and Timorese Bishop Carlos Ximenes Belo were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for their work toward a just and peaceful solution to the conflict in East Timor.” Ramos-Horta returned from exile on December 1, 1999, assuming the post of Senior Minister in the new government. In 2006, Timor-Leste’s young democracy experienced a resurgence of violence and the Prime Minister was forced to step down. José Ramos-Horta, at the time Timor-Leste’s Foreign Minister and Senior Minister, was asked to step into the vacant post. At the time the LA Times called him the young democracy’s “last hope”. In May 2007 Ramos-Horta was elected President of Timor-Leste, surviving an assassination attempt by members of a renegade military group a year later. In 2014, at the request of the UN Secretary General, Ramos-Horta chaired the UN High Level Panel on Peace Operations, a worldwide review of the UN Peacekeeping and Mediation efforts with the goal of making the UN peace and security architecture more efficient in preventing and resolving conflicts. His work and the resulting report and recommendations have received international praise.

More details in: https://ramoshorta.com/index.html