Dom Jaime Gonçalves has been the Catholic Archbishop of Beira since 1984. In 1989, he became involved in parallel diplomacy to persuade the Renamo rebel movement to negotiate with the Mozambican government. When the peace talks between the government and Renamo began in Rome in July 1990 at the Sant’ Egidio community, he became one of the four mediators facilitating the negotiations.
Richard Wilson is a Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Sussex, UK. He has written extensively on ethnic movements and political reform in Guatemala, and his books include Maya Resurgence in Guatemala (University of Oklahoma) and Low Intensity Democracy (with B. Gills and J. Rocamora, Pluto Press). In Human Rights, Culture and Context, he turns his attention to the ways in which human rights institutions often ignore social contexts and people's own perceptions of rights violations.
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Rachel Sieder is a lecturer in politics at the Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London. She is also associate research fellow at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Guatemala, where she is part of a team engaged in research on customary law and the peace process. She is author of Customary Law and Democratic Transition in Guatemala, and editor of Central America: Fragile Transition and Impunity in Latin America. Her research interests include the areas of law, culture, citizenship and democratic transition.
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Tania Palencia Prado is a Guatemalan writer and researcher. She is the editor of the weekly newsletter Inforpress Centroamericana in Guatemala. She has acted as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank, the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development (Montreal), the Lutheran World Federation and USAID. She is the author of numerous articles and publications, including Peace in the Making: Civil Groups in Guatemala (London: Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1996).
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Gustavo Palma Murga is a researcher at the Association for the Advancement of Social Sciences, Guatemala City, and also at the Institute of Political and Social Research in the School of Political Science at the University of San Carlos. His research interests include formal education and its relationship with national identity. He is also engaged in research on agrarian issues in Guatemala.
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Patrick Costello is a political adviser to the parliamentary group of the Party of European Socialists in the European Parliament. For three years, he co-ordinated the Guatemala work of the Central America Human Rights Committee in London. He has written a number of articles and papers on Guatemala for, amongst others, UNHCR and the Institute for Latin America Studies in London.
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Samuel Kofi Woods, II is national director of the Justice and Peace Commission established in Monrovia in November 1991 by the Catholic Church of Liberia. He received the 1994 Reebok human rights award. He was evacuated from Liberia in April 1996 with assistance from numerous international organisations. He has since been prominent in initiating campaigns for the restoration of peace in Liberia.
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Max Ahmadu Sesay holds a PhD in international relations from the University of Southampton, UK (1993). He taught at the universities of Sierra Leone and Southampton in 1989/90 and 1992/93 respectively. He is a research fellow and lecturer at Staffordshire University. His research interests include war, development and regional security in Africa. He is author of several scholarly articles on Liberia and Sierra Leone.
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Charles Abiodun Alao is a lecturer at the Department of War Studies at King's College, University of London. He completed his PhD as a Ford Scholar at King's College in 1992. He is author of African Conflicts: The Future Without the Cold War (London: Brassey Publishers, 1993) and Brothers at War: Dissidence and Rebellion in Southern Africa (London: British Academic Press, 1994).
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