Nobel Peace Laureate (1987), Dr. Óscar Arias was President of Costa Rica from 1986 to 1990 and from 2006 to 2010, having been instrumental in the promotion of peace agreements throughout Central America. A member of Collegium International, he was also elected to the Board of Directors of the International Criminal Court’s Trust Fund for Victims and of the Board of Trustees of Economists for Peace and Security. Besides the Nobel Peace Prize, he is also recipient of the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism and over fifty honorary degrees, including doctorates from Harvard and Princeton universities.

Juanes is a Colombian musician and activist from Medellín, having sold millions of albums and won several Grammy awards. In 2006 he established the Mi Sangre Foundation to help victims of anti-personnel mines. He was honored at the annual benefit gala for Sir Paul McCartney’s Adopt-A-Minefield for his work as a Goodwill Ambassador for United for Colombia, a non-profit organization that raises awareness about the impact of land mines in Colombia. He organized the first “Peace Without Borders” concert as a response to the 2008 Andean diplomatic crisis on the Colombia-Venezuela border. In 2009 the second “Peace Without Borders” concert was held in Havana’s Plaza de la Revolución.

Dr. Mayor Zaragoza is President of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, Co-President for the UN High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations, member of the Honorary Board of the International Coalition for the Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence and Honorary Chairman of the Académie de la Paix. He served as Director-General of UNESCO from 1987 to 1999, establishing the Culture of Peace Program and fostering the adoption of the Decade for the Culture of Peace and Nonviolence. As a biochemist he was also one of the founders of the 1986 Seville Statement on Violence.

Gandhian scholar and activist, Professor Radhakrishnan organized many university and village shantisena and trained more than 5,000 young volunteers over 20 years. He took up assignment under the Government of India as Director of Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti, also establishing the Indian Council of Gandhian Studies; Gandhi Media Centre; G. Ramachandran Institute of Nonviolence and Shantisena; and Missionaries of Nonviolence Foundation India. He has authored over 50 books.

The Rev. Dr. Lafayette, an ordained minister, is a longtime civil rights activist, organizer, and an authority on nonviolent social change. He co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1960, and he was a core leader of the civil rights movement in Nashville, TN, in 1960 and in Selma, AL, in 1965. He directed the Alabama Voter Registration Project in 1962, and he was appointed by Martin Luther King, Jr. to be national program administrator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and national coordinator of the 1968 Poor People’s Campaign. He is Distinguished Senior Scholar-in-Residence at Candler School of Theology, Emory University.

Nobel Chemistry Laureate (1977), Prigogine is widely acknowledged for his work on dissipative structures and their role in thermodynamic systems. He became professor at the Free University of Brussels in 1950, were he also became director of the International Solvay Institute. He was Ashbel Smith Professor of Physics and Chemical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, were he co-founded in 1967 the Center for Complex Quantum Systems. Back in Belgium, he also directed the Center for Statistical Mechanics and Thermodynamics. He received awards such as the Francqui Prize for Exact Sciences (1955) or the Rumford Medal (1976), and was made Viscount by the King of the Belgians.

Dr. Muller devoted 40 years working for peace at the United Nations, reaching the position of Assistant-Secretary-General. He created a World Core Curriculum and is known throughout the world as the “father of global education.” There are 29 Robert Muller schools around the world with more being established each year. The World Core Curriculum earned him the UNESCO Peace Education Prize in 1989. Dr. Muller is also Co-Founder and Chancellor Emeritus of the University for Peace created by the United Nations in demilitarized Costa Rica.

Dr. Ariyaratne is the founder and president of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka, a non-profit organization that involves millions of people in Gandhian nonviolence and rural development. Ariyaratne has won international recognition that includes the Gandhi, Niwana, Sushil Kumar, and Jamnalal Bajaj peace awards. Since 2015 he is one of the 10 members of Sri Lankas’s Constitutional Council. Born in 1931, he holds a doctor of humanities degree, a doctor of letters degree (honorary) and a bachelor of arts in economics, Sinhala and education.

Founding President, Kalayaan College at Quezon City; Former President and Professor Emeritus of Political Science and Public Administration, University of the Philippines; Former Secretary of the UN University; Chairman, Aurora Aragon Quezon Peace Foundation; Trustee of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and the Foundation for Worldwide People Power.

Chaiwat was Professor of Political Science at at Thammasat University in Bangkok and was a Senior Research Scholar with the Thailand Research Fund. He also served as Vice-President of the Strategic Nonviolence Committee, National Research Council of Thailand; Vice-President of the Foundation for Children Development; and Director of the Peace Information Center. He served as Action-Policy Team Leader of the CGNK between 2008 and 2011 and as Member of its Governing Council.