Expert Team: International Advisory Council

Rafael Vilasanjuan is the Policy and Global Development Director of ISGlobal, a major institute that addresses urgent challenges in global health. He has a long and distinguished career in international humanitarian and development issues.

Mr Vilasanjuan worked for over 12 years with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), starting as Communication Director in 1995 and later as General Director of the Spanish section of MSF. In 1999, when the organisation was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he was appointed General Secretary of MSF International, a position he held until 2005. During this period, he worked in conflict zones such as Rwanda, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, Sudan, West Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Colombia. As General Secretary of MSF, between 2002 and 2004 he was the chair of the Steering Committee for Humanitarian Response, representing the largest international humanitarian organisations before the UN. He was a founding member of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), which develops and delivers new drugs for diseases in developing countries – an organisation in which he still collaborates.

Mr Vilasanjuan is a professional journalist with a degree in information sciences. He has a weekly opinion column on international affairs in El Periódico and contributes weekly as a political affairs analyst on the news programme of Cadena SER, the leading radio station in Spain.  

Nathalie Tocci is Director of Istituto Affari Internazionali, Editor of The International Spectator and former Special Adviser to EU HRVP Federica Mogherini, in charge of outreach to think tanks and coordination of work on a new European Security Strategy. She is honorary professor at the University of Tübingen. Previously she held research positions at the Centre for European Policy Studies, Brussels, the Transatlantic Academy, Washington and the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Florence. Her research interests include European foreign policy, conflict resolution, the Middle East and the Mediterranean. Her major publications include Turkey and the European Union, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015 (co-author); Multilateralism in the 21st Century, London and New York, Routledge, 2013 (co-editor), Turkey’s European Future: Behind the Scenes of America’s Influence on EU-Turkey Relations, New York and London, New York University Press, 2011 (author); The EU and Conflict Resolution, Routledge, London, 2007 (author); and EU Accession Dynamics and Conflict Resolution: Catalyzing Peace or Consolidating Partition in Cyprus?, Ashgate, Aldershot, 2004, (author). Nathalie is the 2008 winner of the Anna Lindh award for the study of European Foreign Policy. 

Professor Chaiwat Satha-Anand succumbed to cancer on June 27, 2024. He was the Director of the Thai Peace Information Centre which conducts studies and activism in relation to the Thai military and social issues. He was also Chairperson of the Strategic Nonviolence Commission in Thailand. His whole life was dedicated to nonviolence theory and activism, and he was particularly dedicated to understanding the peacebuilding traditions of Islam. For several years, he directed the International Peace Research Association (IPRA) Commission on Nonviolence.

His works have been published both in Thailand and abroad, and some of his writings have been translated and published in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Korean. International research projects which he recently led include: Chaiwat Satha-Anand and Olivier Urbain (eds.) Protecting the Sacred, Creating Peace in Asia-Pacific (Routledge, 2017); and Chaiwat Satha-Anand and Olivier Urbain (eds.) The Promise of Reconciliation? Examining violent and nonviolent conflicts in Asia (Routledge, 2017).

In 2006, he was named “Thailand’s Best Researcher in Political Science and Public Administration” by the National Research Council and Thammasat University’s Kiratiyajaraya Distinguished Professor. He received the National Sri Burapha Distinguished Writer Award in Bangkok, and the International El-Hibri Peace Education Prize in Washington D.C. in 2012.

Dr. Nasser H. Saidi is the Founder and President of Nasser Saidi & Associates. He is the former Chief Economist and Head of External Relations of Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC) and Executive Director of the Hawkamah-Institute for Corporate Governance and The Mudara Institute of Directors at the DIFC between 2006 and 2012. 

Dr. Saidi is a member of the IMF’s Regional Advisory Group for MENA and Co-Chair of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD) MENA Corporate Governance Working Group. He is a member of the Private Sector Advisory Group of the Global Corporate Governance Forum, an institution of the World Bank driving global corporate governance reforms. He is also Chair of the regional Clean Energy Business Council.

In 2013, he was named among the 50 most Influential Arabs in the World by The Middle East magazine, for the fourth consecutive year and named among the 500 Most Powerful Arabs in the world by Arabian Business for the second consecutive year.

Dr. Saidi was the Minister of Economy and Trade and Minister of Industry of Lebanon between 1998 and 2000. He was the first Vice-Governor of the Central Bank of Lebanon for two successive mandates, 1993-1998 and 1998-2003. He was a Member of the UN Committee for Development Policy (UNCDP) for two mandates over the period 2000-2006, a position to which he was appointed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, in his personal capacity.

He has written a number of books and numerous publications addressing macroeconomic, capital market development and international economic issues in Lebanon and the region and is the author of, “Corporate Governance in the MENA countries: Improving Transparency & Disclosure”. His research interests include macroeconomics, financial market development, payment systems and international economic policy, and information and communication technology (ICT).

Dr. Saidi was a private banker and served as an economic adviser and director to a number of central banks and financial institutions in Arab countries, Europe and Central and Latin America. Prior to his public career, Dr. Nasser pursued a career as an academic, serving as a Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics in the University of Chicago, the Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales (Geneva, CH), and the Université de Genève. He also served as a lecturer at the American University of Beirut and the Université St. Joseph in Beirut.

Dr. Saidi holds a Ph.D. and a M.A. in Economics from the University of Rochester in the U.S.A, a M.Sc. from University College, London University and a B.A. from the American University of Beirut.

Ahmed Rashid is one of the world’s foremost experts on Afghanistan, Pakistan, Central Asia and the Taliban. He is the author of many influential books on the region, including the bestselling Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Published prior to the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, Taliban became a critical guide to understanding the Taliban in their wake and was translated into more than 40 languages. He has also written two books on Central Asia: The Resurgence of Central Asia and Jihad: The Rise of Militant Islam in Central Asia. Following Taliban, he completed a trilogy of books on Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US involvement in the region with Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia and most recently, Pakistan on the Brink: The Future of Pakistan, Afghanistan and the West.

He is a champion of local media development and donated a third of the profits from his book earnings to create the Open Media Fund for Afghanistan. He also enlisted the Open Society Institute, AOL Time Warner Foundation, and Internews Network to provide financial support for local Afghan journalists. 

Rashid has been covering the wars in Afghanistan and conflicts in Central Asia and Pakistan since 1979. He currently writes regularly for the Financial Times, the New York Times, the New York Review of Books, Britain’s Spectator magazine, Spain’s El Mundo, BBC Online and several Pakistani publications. Previously, he was the Afghanistan and Central Asia correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review (1982-2004), a correspondent for The Independent (1986-1992) and The Daily Telegraph (1992-2008). Foreign Policy magazine chose him as one of the world’s most important 100 Global Thinkers in 2009 and 2010.

Rashid is a member of the Advisory Board of Eurasia Net of the Soros Foundation, a scholar of the Davos World Economic Forum and a member of the Advisory Committee of the Asia division for Human Rights Watch. In 2004, he was appointed to the Board of Advisers of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva, and in December 2009, he was appointed a member of the board of New York’s Committee to Protect Journalists. A former Visiting Scholar at the Columbia University School of Journalism. Rashid has received several international awards for his work, including the Nisar Osmani Courage in Journalism Award and Spain’s prestigious Casa Asia prize.

Philip McDonagh is Director of the Centre for Religion, Human Values, and International Relations at Dublin City University. He is also Distinguished Global Fellow at the Princeton-based Centre of Theological Inquiry.

In Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs, as Political Counsellor in London, Philip played a significant part in the Northern Ireland peace process in the build-up to the Good Friday Agreement. He later served as Head of Mission in India (accredited also to Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh), the Holy See, Finland, Russia (and the five Central Asian states), and the OSCE.  As a serving diplomat, and since retiring in 2017, Philip has been closely involved in bringing lessons from the Northern Ireland peace process to other situations, including Jammu and Kashmir (a joint Irish-British initiative), Sri Lanka (another Irish-British initiative, with the participation of John Hume), the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the ‘protracted conflicts’ of concern to the OSCE, and the situation on the Korean peninsula.  

Philip has published poetry and works for the theatre, including The Song the Oriole Sang (Dedalus Press, Dublin, 2010) and Gondla, or the Salvation of the Wolves (Arlen House, 2016 – an adaptation of Nikolay Gumilev’s verse drama). His articles have appeared in the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Poetry Ireland Review, Studies (Dublin), Doctrine and Life (Dublin), Transnational Perspectives (Geneva), India International Quarterly (New Delhi), Logos (St. Paul, Minnesota), and the Balliol College Record. He is also principal author of the OSCE Academic Network Report on ‘Religion and Security-building in an OSCE Context’ (2018). With three co-authors, he is currently completing a book on religion in global diplomacy. 

Philip is a member of the Advisory Council of the Institute for Economics and Peace (Sydney) and a member of the Steering Committee of the OSCE Academic Network (Hamburg). He read Classics at Balliol College, Oxford, where he was elected President of the Oxford Union in 1972.

Dr. Frannie Léautier is Chair of the IFIT International Advisory Council.

Frannie is CEO of SouthBridge Investments. Previously she held many positions including: Senior Vice President at the African Development Bank, where she was responsible for the day to day running of the Bank and led the intense transformation effort the Bank was going through; executive director of the TBG Group; and Managing Partner of the Fezembat Group, a company she founded in 2007. Clients she served in the latter role included the Trade and Development Bank (TDB—formerly PTA Bank) where she was an Eminent Person and Special Advisor to TDB Bank Board and President, advising on strategy, investments in infrastructure and alternative finance arrangements including private equity.  She also advised the chairman of OCP (the largest phosphate company in the world) in the Kingdom of Morocco. 

Earlier in her career, Dr. Léautier was Chairperson and Co-Founding Partner of Mkoba Private Equity, a fund offering growth capital to small and medium enterprises in Africa. She also spent fifteen years at the World Bank, 11 of which in executive roles. These included World Bank Vice President and Chief of Staff to the President of the World Bank.  She was also Executive Secretary of the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF) where she led the effort of transforming the Foundation and orienting it towards the new sources of funding capacity building, public goods efforts, and philanthropic activities. 

She is experienced with Executive and non-Executive roles on Boards having chaired the AfDB Board, and through holding wide ranging Board Director positions including Vice Chair TDB Bank; Treasurer and Chair of Risk and Audit Committee African Economic Research Consortium (AERC); Founding Board Member Nelson Mandela Institute for Science & Technology; Founding Member Editorial Board of the Journal of African Trade (JAT); Founding Board Member UONGOZI Institute; Founding Board Member of the Journal of Infrastructure Systems; and Advisory Board Member of the Institute of Security Studies (ISS). She recently joined the UN foundation board. She chairs the environment, social and governance (ESG) committee of Orca Explorations, a natural gas company operating in Tanzania, and listed on the Toronto Exchange.  

Dr. Léautier served on Visiting Committees at the MIT Corporation, was a Trustee at the King Baudouin Foundation USA (KBFUS) and served on the Advisory Board of Women’s World Banking. She served as Co-Chair for World Economic Forum (WEF) Africa and is a member of the board of the WEF ́s regional strategy group (RSG) for Africa. She is an active member of the WEF Global Agenda Councils and was Co-chair of the Global Future Council on the Future of Economic Progress. Another of her roles with the WEF was as a member of the Core Working Group on the Digital Economy Research Agenda of the WEForum.

Dr. Léautier has a masters and doctorate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from University of Dar es Salaam. She graduated from Harvard University’s Executive Program. She is a recipient of many awards including Best Manager at the World Bank, an honorary Doctor of Law from Lancaster University in the UK in recognition of her work in infrastructure, and an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from North Central College in recognition of her contribution to Africa.  Dr. Léautier received the title of Queen of Development for the Agona area in Ghana in 2012.  She has featured several times in the list of the most influential people in Africa. She held the position of Distinguished Professor at Sciences Po Paris for five years, where she still teaches a graduate course on Leadership in a Globalized World. She is well published, including three acclaimed books: Leadership in a Globalized World; Cities and Spaces of Leadership; and Cities in a Globalized World.

Melanie Cohen Greenberg is the Managing Director, Peacebuilding, at Humanity United. Previously she was President and CEO of the Alliance for Peacebuilding. Before that, she was the President and Founder of the Cypress Fund for Peace and Security, a foundation making grants in the areas of peacebuilding and nuclear nonproliferation.  From 2003–2004, she was a Visiting Scholar at the Johns Hopkins School for Advanced International Studies, focusing on issues of justice in post-conflict peacebuilding. From 2000–2002, Ms. Greenberg was Director of the Conflict Resolution Program at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.  She previously served as Associate Director of the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, and Deputy Director of the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation. In her work on international conflict resolution, Ms. Greenberg has helped design and facilitate public peace processes in the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and the Caucasus. She has taught advanced courses in international conflict resolution, multi-party conflict resolution and negotiation at Stanford Law School and Georgetown University Law Center and is currently an adjunct faculty member at the Elliott School of George Washington University. She was lead editor and chapter author of the volume Words over War: Mediation and Arbitration to Prevent Deadly Conflict (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000).   

Ms. Greenberg is a frequent writer, lecturer, teacher and trainer in a broad range of areas related to international law, international security, and peacebuilding.  In her training, she has led courses for Congressional staff, scientists at the National Institutes of Health, international lawyers, business executives, and graduate students from around the world.  Before beginning her work in international peacebuilding, Ms. Greenberg practiced as a bankruptcy lawyer at Weil, Gotshal & Manges in Houston.  Ms. Greenberg serves on a number of boards of peace and security organisations.  She holds an AB from Harvard, and a JD from Stanford Law School. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and college age children.

Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AO QC is Distinguished Honorary Professor at the Australian National University, where he was Chancellor from 2010-19,  and President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group, the independent global conflict prevention and resolution organisation which he led from 2000 to 2009.

He previously spent 21 years in Australian politics, thirteen of them as a Cabinet Minister. As Foreign Minister (1988-96) he was best known internationally for his roles in developing the UN peace plan for Cambodia, concluding the Chemical Weapons Convention, and initiating new Asia Pacific regional economic and security architecture. He has written or edited nine books – most recently The Responsibility to Protect: Ending Mass Atrocity Crimes Once and for All, published by the Brookings Institution in 2008 – and has published over 100 journal articles and chapters on foreign relations, human rights, and legal and constitutional reform.

He has co-chaired two major International Commissions, on Intervention and State Sovereignty (2000-01), and Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (2008-10), whose report Eliminating Nuclear Threats was published in December 2009. He was a member of the UN Secretary-General’s High Level Panel on Threats, Challenges and Change (2004), the Blix Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction (2006), the Zedillo Commission of Eminent Persons on The Role of the IAEA to 2020 and Beyond (2008) and the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Committee on Genocide Prevention. He is Co-Chair of the International Advisory Board of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect.

In May 2010 Gareth Evans was awarded the 2010 Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute Four Freedoms Award for Freedom from Fear, for his pioneering work on the Responsibility to Protect concept, and his contributions to conflict prevention and resolution, arms control and disarmament. In December 2011 Foreign Policy magazine cited him as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2011.