American public perceptions of Asia over the past two decades have been largely shaped by two phenomena affecting the region-economic expansion and economic crisis. These developments have obscured a number of global challenges of increasing significance, such as those concerning poverty, civil and ethnic conflict, religious extremism, environmental degradation, and violation of human rights, among many others. The Asia Society recognizes that these issues are fundamental to human security; the strategies used to address them will play a vital role in international relations in the twenty-first century.

The Asian Social Issues Program (ASIP) initiative focuses on the following kinds of issues: communities and conflict resolution, transitional justice in post-conflict societies, women’s issues, environmental governance, HIV/AIDS and public health, human and sex trafficking, migrations across and within national boundaries, globalization and its impact, and human rights. Looking beneath the more visible economic and political events, the ASIP initiative examines the underlying causes and consequences of these core human security issues. The program aims to deepen American awareness and educate multiple constituencies about these issues, and draw attention to the innovative work and solutions implemented from the grassroots to government levels, as well as the necessary global partnership and leadership to meet these challenges.

John Ambler is Senior Vice President for Programs of Oxfam America. Prior to this role, Mr. Ambler was the Regional Director for Asia at CARE USA based in Bangkok, Thailand, where he supervised and set strategic direction for CARE relief and development operations for Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Tajikistan. He oversaw the largest budget in the CARE system and the work of over 5000 CARE staff in Asia. Mr. Ambler provided strategic and conceptual direction for CARE's programs in rural development, development finance, urban poverty, HIV/AIDS, health, education, and nutrition. He also played a central role in that organization's effort to adopt a rights-based approach to development. Before joining CARE, John had spent nearly ten years with the Ford Foundation as the Deputy Country Representative of the Ford Foundation's India office and was the Ford's first representative of its office in Hanoi, Vietnam. Prior to his tenure with Ford, he spent many years working in Indonesia on issues related to water management, a field in which he has an international reputation. . He speaks fluent Indonesian and other languages including some Vietnamese, Burmese and German. He received his B.A. from Stanford University, M.A. in International Studies from University of Denver and his Ph. D. in Development Sociology from Cornell University.

Jon A. Anda is Chairman of Worldwide Equity Capital Markets at Morgan Stanley. Prior to this, he was Managing Director and Global Head of Corporate Finance, a business unit comprising generalist investment banking practice and regional offices. From 1999 through 2003 Jon was Global Head of Equity Capital Markets and also Co-Head of Global Capital Markets after debt and equity issuance businesses merged in 2002. After joining the Firm in 1986, Jon spent four years in Equity Capital Markets in New York followed by four years in Corporate Finance, based in Chicago. He was Head of Global Equity Syndicate in New York, prior to relocating to Hong Kong in 1995. He headed both the Asian Institutional Equity and Asian Investment Banking Divisions during his four years in the region. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley Jon spent six years in the Capital Markets Group at Continental Illinois National Bank. Jon graduated from University of Illinois in 1979 and received his Master of Management in Finance from Northwestern University, Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1980. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Asia Society and the Carver Center, and serves on the President's Council of Environmental Defense, and is a member of the Kellogg Graduate School of Management Advisory Board.

Nancy Barry is President of Women's World Banking, an organization that has created affiliate, associate, learning and change networks which provide financial services to over 10 million low income women entrepreneurs in Asia, Latin America, Africa, North America and Europe. During her fifteen years at the World Bank, she pioneered the Bank's involvement in small and medium-sized enterprises and designed operations in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Until September 1990, she headed the Industry Development Division, providing leadership in industrial competitiveness and financial intermediation. From 1988 to 1990, she chaired the Donor's Committee on Small and Medium Enterprises. Prior to joining the World Bank, she worked for the Peruvian government on small enterprise development; for McKinsey in Tanzania on rural enterprise strategies; for Stanford University on enterprise management in Eastern Europe; and in the United States for JBA Management Engineers. She has been a member of WWB's Board of Trustees since 1981, and was Vice Chairperson from 1988 to 1990, before being appointed President.

Carol Bellamy is President & CEO of World Learning. Ms. Bellamy has also served as Executive Director of the United Nations Children's Fund since 1995. In her tenth year at the helm of UNICEF, Ms. Bellamy has focused the world's leading children's organization on five major priorities: early childhood care and survival; immunizing every child; getting all girls and boys into schools that offer a quality basic education; reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS among young people; and fighting for the protection of children from violence and exploitation. Ms. Bellamy believes these priorities are mutually supportive and will help the world reach the Millennium Development Goals agreed to by all nations in 2000. Under Ms. Bellamy's leadership UNICEF has become a champion of global investment in children, arguing that efforts to reduce poverty and build a more secure world can only be successful if they ensure that children have an opportunity to grow to adulthood in health, peace and dignity. She has challenged leaders from all walks of life to recognize their moral, social, and economic responsibility to invest in children - and to shift national resources accordingly. She encouraged the General Assembly to allow children to take part in the UN Special Session on Children in May 2002, and hundreds did, meeting directly with Heads of State to discuss the issues affecting their lives. The ground-breaking summit adopted new global goals for children and provided world leaders with ideas and inspiration for achieving them. Ms. Bellamy has visited more than 100 countries, advocating for children and women with heads of state, cultural icons, corporate leaders, rebel commanders, and many others. Trained in corporate law and finance and deeply committed to global peace and development, Ms. Bellamy has brought a compassionate yet pragmatic ethic to improving the lives of children. Her first two years at UNICEF were devoted to streamlining operations, cutting costs, and giving UNICEF's 160 country offices more flexibility to respond to local needs. She also focused UNICEF on helping countries improve data gathering so that global goals set for children can be monitored effectively. Prior to joining UNICEF, Ms. Bellamy was Director of the United States Peace Corps. Having served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala from 1963 to 1965, she was the first former volunteer to run the organization, which works in more than 90 countries. Ms. Bellamy has had a distinguished career in the private sector. She was a Managing Director of Bear Stearns & Co. from 1990 to 1993, and a Principal at Morgan Stanley and Co. from 1986 to 1990. Between 1968 and 1971 she was an associate at Cravath, Swaine and Moore. Ms. Bellamy also spent 13 years as an elected public official, including five years in the New York State Senate (1973-1977). In 1978, she became the first woman to be elected President of the New York City Council, a position she held until 1985. Ms. Bellamy earned her law degree from New York University in 1968. She is a former Fellow of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and an honorary member of Phi Alpha Alpha, the U.S. National Honor Society for Accomplishment and Scholarship in Public Affairs and Administration. Ms. Bellamy graduated from Gettysburg College in 1963.

Chris Beyrer, M.D., M.P.H, is Associate Professor of Epidemiology and International Health at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, MD. He serves as Director of Johns Hopkins Fogarty AIDS International Training and Research Program, and as Founding Director of the newly created Center for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins. He is Senior Scientific Liaison for the HIV Vaccine Trial Network of the U.S. National Institutes of Health for HIV vaccine trials in Eurasia. He has extensive experience in conducting international collaborative research and programs in HIV/AIDS and other infectious disease epidemiology, prevention research, vaccine preparedness, and in health and human rights. He is Principal Investigator of an NIH supported study of health risks among Russian sex workers; PI of a USAID funded study of HIV among IDU in Tajikistan; Co-PI of a longitudinal cohort study of the epidemiology of HIV infection among opiate users in northern Thailand, and was Field Director of the Thai PAVE and HIVNET studies from 1992-1997, based in northern Thailand. From 1992-1997 he was visiting faculty in the Department of Family Medicine at Chiang Mai University, and currently serves as International Advisor to the Research Institute for Health Sciences of CMU. He currently has research or training activities in Thailand, China, India, Laos, Malawi, Uganda, Ethiopia, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, and Tajikistan. He is the author of the 1998 book War in the Blood: Sex, Politics and AIDS in Southeast Asia (Zed Books, London, St. Martins Press, New York,) and the author or more than 110 scientific papers. He has served as a consultant and/or advisor on health to The Council on Foreign Relations, The Office of AIDS Research of the U.S. NIH, The U.S. Military HIV Research Program, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine, the Thai Red Cross Program on AIDS, The Royal Thai Army, The ASEAN Regional Security Forum, The Institute for Asian Democracy, The World Bank Institute, the World Bank Thailand Office, The Lao National Committee for the Control of AIDS, The Levi Strauss Foundation, The Open Society Institute, and numerous other organizations.

Eleanor Briggs, an award-winning photographer, has worked mostly in Southeast Asia and India since 1989, photographing people, nature and most specifically birds. In her capacity as a field researcher for the International Crane Foundation, Eleanor has spent many months following up leads on crane sitings, exploring the outer reaches of or even living for short periods of time in Southeast Asia -- Burma, Laos, Bhutan, and Cambodia. More recently she has been photographing habitat and wildlife for the Wildlife Conservation Society in Cambodia and India. Over the last two decades, her work has been shown in museums and galleries throughout New England, as well as around the country. Many of her photographs have appeared in national magazines and books.

Muzaffar Chishti directs the Migration Policy Institute's (MPI) office at New York University School of Law. His work focuses on U.S. immigration policy, the intersection of labor and immigration law, civil liberties, and immigrant integration. Prior to joining MPI, Mr. Chishti was Director of the Immigration Project of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial & Textile Employees (UNITE). Mr. Chishti is a member and former Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Immigration Forum. He also serves on the boards of the National Coalition for Haitian Rights; the U.S. Committee for Refugees; the National Immigration Law Center, Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics, Asian-American Federation of New York, and the New York Immigration Coalition. He has been a member of the Coordinating Committee on Immigration of the American Bar Association. Mr. Chishti has testified extensively on immigration and refugee legislation before various Congressional committees. In 1992, as part of a U.S. team, he assisted the Russian Parliament to draft its legislation on forced migrants and refugees. He is a 1994 recipient of New York State Governor's Award for Outstanding Asian-Americans, and a 1995 recipient of the Ellis Island Medal of Honor. His publications include: America's Challenge: Domestic Security, Civil Liberties, and National Unity after September 11 (co-authored with Doris Meissner, Demetrios G. Papademetriou, Jay Peterzell, Michael J. Wishnie and Steve W. Yale-Loehr) issued by the Migration Policy Institute ; "The Role of States in U.S. Immigration Policy" in NYU Annual Survey of American Law(2002); "Rights or Privileges", in the special issue on the Promise of Immigration, Boston Review; "Employer Sanctions Against Immigrant Workers," in Working USA; "Blaming the Victim," in Cornell ILR Review; "Unions and the New Immigration Law," in NYU Review of Law and Social Change; and Immigration Issues for Labor Lawyers (co-authored with Robert Gibbs and Lucas Guttentag). Mr. Chishti was educated at St. Stephen's College, Delhi; School of Law, University of Delhi; Cornell Law School; and the Columbia School of International Affairs.

Barbara Crossette, a writer on foreign affairs and author of several books on Asia, was The New York Times bureau chief at the United Nations from 1994 to 2001 and earlier a Times correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia. She has also been a diplomatic correspondent in Washington and has reported for the Times from Central America, the Caribbean and Canada. In New York, she has been deputy foreign editor and senior editor in charge of the Times’ weekend news operations. Before joining the newspaper in 1973, Ms. Crossette worked for The Evening and Sunday Bulletin in Philadelphia and The Birmingham Post in Birmingham, England. In 1991, Ms. Crossette won the George Polk Award for foreign reporting for her coverage of the assassination in India of a former prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi. In 1998, she won the 25-year achievement award of The Silurians, a society of New York journalists, and the award for international reporting from InterAction, a coalition of more than 150 international nonprofit aid and development organizations. In 1999, she received the Business Council of the United Nations’ Korn Ferry Award for outstanding reporting on the organization, and in 2003 the United Nations Correspondents’ Association’s lifetime achievement award. Ms. Crossette is the author of India Facing the 21st Century, published by Indiana University Press in 1993, and So Close to Heaven: The Vanishing Buddhist Kingdoms of the Himalayas, published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1995 and in paperback by Random House/Vintage Destinations in 1996. The Great Hill Stations of Asia was published by Westview Press in 1998 and in paperback by Basic Books in 1999. In 2000, she wrote a survey of India and Indian-American relations, India: Old Civilization in a New World, for the Foreign Policy Association in New York. Ms. Crossette has been a member of the adjunct faculty of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and in 1980-81 was a Fulbright teaching fellow in journalism at Punjab University in Chandigarh, India. In 1994, she was the Ferris Visiting Professor on Politics and the Press at Princeton University. Since 2001, she has taught a seminar on writing on international affairs for Bard College. In 2003, she led an advanced workshop in journalism at the Royal University of Phnom Penh for writers and editors from Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Burma. She was named a Knight International Press Fellow for 2004-2005 to work with newspapers and journalism organizations in Brazil. Born in Philadelphia, Ms. Crossette received a B.A. in history and political science from Muhlenberg College in 1963. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Women’s Foreign Policy Group. She is an editorial consultant to the United Nations Association of the United States.

Josh DeWind is Director of the International Migration Program of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), which since 1994 has awarded research fellowships and organized scholarly working groups to explore the relationships between migration and religion, politics, race, gender, education, and other issues of national and international concern. The next meeting of the program's working group on Transnational Religion, Migration, and Diversity will take place in Malaysia and will focus on South East Asia. He obtained a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1977 and has since focused his research and writing on various aspects of international migration related to economic development, employment, education, and other aspects of immigrant community life. From 1989 to 2001 he was Professor of Anthropology at Hunter College, City University of New York where he directed the college's Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Human Rights Programs.

William W. Ferguson is Asia Pacific Group Marketing Executive for Citigroup. Ferguson assumed his present position in March of 2001 and first joined Citibank, a member of Citigroup, in 1970. Prior to taking up his current role, Ferguson was Head of Citibank's Global Corporate Bank and Citigroup's Country Corporate Officer for Australia and New Zealand. The majority of Ferguson's career with Citibank has been spent in the Asia Pacific region including assignments in Indonesia, Brunei, Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore and The Philippines. Currently, Ferguson is a board member of the Korea Society, American Australian Association, U.S.-Taiwan Business Council and the Indonesian American Chamber of Commerce. Ferguson is a graduate of the University of Missouri where he received an AB degree in Economics (1962) and JD degree in Law (1965). He attended the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School in 1984. From 1966 to 1969 Ferguson was a Captain in the US Air Force.

Laurie Garrett is a Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations. Garrett is one of America’s most distinguished science journalists. She is the only person ever to be awarded all three of the major prizes in journalism: the Peabody, the Polk (twice), and the Pulitzer (for which she has also been a finalist three times). She has also been honored three times by the Overseas Press Club of America. Currently at the Council for Foreign Relations, Ms. Garrett is head of the project on global health issues such as HIV/AIDS, epidemic diseases, and bioterrorism. Garrett is the author of two best-selling books on public health. The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994) was named “one of the best books of 1994” by both the New York Times Book Review and Library Journal. Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (Hyperion Press, 2000) was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Garrett was most recently (1988-2004) the health and science writer for Newsday, where she was also a contributor to publications such as Vanity Fair, the Los Angeles Times, and Foreign Affairs. Prior to that, she was the science correspondent for National Public Radio (1980-88). Her radio reporting received numerous awards, including Best Consumer Journalism from the National Press Club (1982) the Meritorious Achievement Award in Radio from the San Francisco Media Alliance (1983) and the First Prize in Radio from the World Hunger Alliance (1987). Garrett graduated with honors in biology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She did graduate work in the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992-93, she was a visiting fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health. Garrett has been honored with honorary doctorates from Wesleyan Illinois University and the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.

Adrienne Germain President of the International Women's Health Coalition, has worked for 31 years to promote women's opportunities, health, and rights in Southern countries. She trained in sociology and demography at Wellesley College and the University of California, Berkeley. After two years as Staff Associate at the Population Council, Germain worked at the Ford Foundation for 14 years, designing and managing programs and projects to support women's work and credit opportunities, as well as girls' and women's health and education, in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Germain was the first woman to serve as an international Resident Representative of the Ford Foundation. In this capacity, she lived for four years in Bangladesh, where she directed the Foundation's programs in agriculture, rural employment, international economics, women's rights, arts and culture, and reproductive health. Germain's work with Southern women led her to join the International Women's Health Coalition in 1985 to advocate more directly for women's advancement, especially for approaches to reproductive and sexual health that respect women's rights and build on their strengths. She served as a member, core strategist, and negotiator on the United States government delegations to the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD, Cairo), the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women (FWCW, Beijing), and the U.N.'s five-year reviews of ICPD and FWCW implementation. As part of a consortium of bilateral donors, technical agencies, and the World Bank, she worked with the Bangladesh government and civil society to design the first Bangladesh national health and population policy, based on the Cairo and Beijing agreements. Currently, Germain serves on the Advisory Committees of the Asia Watch Division and the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch; the editorial board of Reproductive Health Matters; the Foundation Council of the Global Forum for Health Research; the Millennium Development Goals Task Force on Child Mortality and Maternal Health; and the board of Gender and Rights (Denmark). She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Women's Foreign Policy Group, and has published extensively on women's health and rights, population, development, and U.S. foreign policy as well as global policy on these issues.

Ruchira Gupta is the Anti-Trafficking Expert for a USAID project based in Washington DC to end human trafficking all over the world. She is an Emmy-winning journalist for investigative journalism in a documentary, The Selling of Innocents, on the trafficking of women and children from Nepal to India. She is also the founder of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a not-for-profit organization supporting women and children in Kolkata and Mumbai's red-light areas. Her career spans 14 years as a journalist in print, radio and TV with organizations like The Telegraph, The Sunday Observer and the BBC, followed by five years in various capacities in the United Nations in Katmandu, Bangkok, Kosovo and New York working to end the trafficking of women and children. She has testified to the US Senate as an expert witness on human trafficking for the Victims Protection Bill. She also worked with various UN agencies for five years on the UN Optional Protocol on trafficking. At present she is working on a book on the connection between trafficking and conflict.

Geeta Rao Gupta is President of the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) based in Washington, D.C. She has 20 years of experience in research and program development, emphasizing women's health and women in development. She has managed research programs on women and AIDS, and on adolescent sexuality and nutrition. An international expert on HIV/AIDS, she serves on the board of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, the International Development Conference, and the National Council for Research on Women. She holds a Ph.D. in social psychology.

David Hirsch was Director of Sedona Corporation, a company that develops and markets internet application solutions. Prior to this, he was Director of Numar Coporation, a world leading company that employs MRI technology for oil and gas exploration and development. He was also Managing Director of Schroder, Wertheim and Company, a brokerage and asset management firm. He is a Trustee of St. Luke's Chamber Music Ensemble and The Jewish Museum. He was a former Trustee of City Parks Museum. He received his Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard University in 1959 and his Bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1957.

Margaret Huang is the Director of the U.S. Program for Global Rights - Partners for Justice (formerly the International Advocacy International Human Rights Law Group). Prior to this she was Program Director for Asia and the Middle East at the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, a non-governmental human rights organization based in Washington, DC. She was also the Program Manager of the Women's Economic and Legal Rights (WELR) program at The Asia Foundation, with projects in Bangladesh, Cambodia, India, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Before joining The Asia Foundation, Ms. Huang served as a Professional Staff Member for the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She advised Democrat committee members on policy issues in Asia, Africa, foreign aid, women's rights, and international law. She has a Master of International Affairs degree in Human Rights from Columbia University and a Bachelor's degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Sidney Jones is the Indonesia Project Director in Jakarta for the International Crisis Group. Before her recent move to Jakarta she was the Executive Director of the Asia Division at Human Rights Watch. An Indonesia specialist with twenty years' experience working in and on the country, she served as director of the Human Rights Office of the UN Transitional Administration in East Timor from December 1999 through July 2000. She has written extensively on human rights in Asia with a particular focus on Indonesia and East Timor and appears frequently as a television and radio commentator on Asian issues. Prior to joining Human Rights Watch, Ms. Jones was the Indonesia and Philippines researcher at Amnesty International in London. From 1977 to 1984, she was a program officer with the Ford Foundation, first in Jakarta, later in New York. She holds degrees in Oriental Studies and International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania and spent a year at Pahlavi University in Shiraz, Iran. She is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Association of Asian Studies. She is on the Asia advisory committee of the American Friends Service Committee and the board of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations.

Michael Kobori has rejoined Levi Strauss & Co., where he is Director of Global Code of Conduct, responsible for coordinating implementation and continuous improvement of the company's labor and environmental standards at its 600 contractors worldwide. Prior to rejoining Levi Strauss & Co., Kobori served in a number of senior management positions at Business for Social Responsibility, including Vice-President of Continuous Learning, Vice-President of the Global Business Responsibility Resource Center, and Director of Business and Human Rights Programs. Kobori previously served as Senior Manager for Public Affairs at Levi Strauss & Co., where he was responsible for developing and implementing global policies on key corporate social responsibility issues, including human rights, downsizing, and the environment. Kobori began his career at The Asia Foundation, where he held various positions, including Director of Vietnam Programs, Assistant Representative, Thailand, Executive Assistant to the President, and Assistant Representative, Bangladesh. He is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. He received his Master's in Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

Radhika Lal is a development economist. Currently, she is a policy advisor in UNDP's Bureau for Development Policy in New York. She has a focus in technology, trade and macroeconomic policies and issues. She has advised developing country governments and other partners on issues relating to the role of information and communication technologies (ICT) as an enabler for development. Prior to working with UNDP, she undertook research, taught economics, and worked with a number of civil society organizations on advocacy and capacity-building activities on issues relating to economic development, trade, the Asian economic crisis, and technology choices. Her most recent publications include "Using ICT for Reaching the Millennium Development Goals: Moving from Rhetoric to Action" in ICT4D: Connecting People for a Better World; "National & Regional E-Development Strategies: A Blueprint for Action" and "The Role of ICT in Enhancing the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals," co-authored with Denis Gilhooly and available in The Role of ICT in Global Development, UN ICT Task Force (2003). She has been a presenter/discussant on economic, social, political and cultural subjects at institutions such as UN University INTEC, the Asia Society, the Asian Writers Workshop and at various global and local fora. She has participated in radio programs on socio-economic issues and current affairs.

Linda Lim is Professor of Corporate Strategy and International Business at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, which has won several awards (including "Beyond Grey Pinstripes") for its programs on corporate social responsibility. Linda is also the incoming director of the University's Center for Southeast Asian Studies. She holds degrees in economics from the universities of Cambridge (BA), Yale (MA) and Michigan (PhD), and teaches MBA courses on The World Economy and Business in Asia which include modules on globalization's impact on labor and the environment. She occasionally consults for thinks-tanks and international agencies, most frequently for the International Labour Organisation. She has published extensively on economic development, international trade and investment, multinational and Asian business, labor and gender issues in Southeast Asia, including recent works on globalization, and on corruption. Her current research includes the impact of MFA textile quota expiry on the garments export industry and workers, and the evolution of internet-enabled entrepreneurship, in Southeast Asia. A former Trustee of the Asia Society, she has served on the United Nations Committee for Development Planning and many other professional committees.

Raymond C. Offenheiser has served as President of Oxfam America since 1995. Prior to joining Oxfam he worked for the Ford Foundation in Bangladesh and South America, the Inter-American Foundation in both Brazil and Colombia and Save the Children Federation in Mexico. He has worked on projects of community-based resource management, credit and enterprise development, human rights and local governance, and international security and cooperation. In his role as Oxfam America president, Mr. Offenheiser is a board member of Oxfam International, the board of Grainpro, Inc., and on the Executive Committee of the Board of Interaction. He is an advisor to several organizations including Harvard University's Asia Center, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Inter-American Dialogue, the Hesburgh Center for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Council on Economic Development and World Learning's Global Partnership, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also a frequent commentator in the media on such subjects as foreign aid, globalization, and international debt, as well as the evolving challenges facing the field of humanitarian assistance and transnational NGO movements.

Sheila Platt is Director for External Relations of Community and Family Services International, a non-profit social development Philippine organization specializing in psycho social services for uprooted persons and known as CFSI. This agency came into being in the early 1980s in the two Philippine UNHCR administered camps for Indochinese refugees, and has worked internationally, often in cooperation with UNHCR in Hong Kong, Vietnam, West Timor, Myanmar, and Cambodia as well as in the Philippines. CFSI's currently assists about 33,000 persons displaced by fighting in Mindanao, many of whom are elderly women, widows and their children. CFSI was a consultant on the formulation of UNHCR's guidelines for assisting especially vulnerable persons among refugee populations, and has long identified women's and girls health issues as deserving of special attention. Ms Platt is a social worker who has lived and worked in both Northeast, and Southeast as well as South Asia and has long term interest in the topic of tonight's discussion.

Sheridan Prasso is a writer, editor and Asia Specialist. She served as Business Week's New York-based Asia Editor from 1996 through 2000, where she was responsible for editing and helping direct the magazine's coverage of economic and political affairs in Asia, with special emphasis on China, Southeast Asia and South Asia. Previously she spent five years in Asia as a news correspondent: in Hong Kong as an Asia-Pacific regional editor for Agence France-Presse, and in Cambodia as Bureau Chief for AFP. She was also posted to Paris and to the United Nations bureau for AFP, and has worked for The Associated Press in New York, Chicago and Washington, DC. She holds a Master of Philosophy degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge, England, and a B.A. in International Affairs from George Washington University. She speaks French, Italian, Spanish, Mandarin and Khmer with varying degrees of fluency, and is a member of a number of international organizations. She is currently on leave serving as a Japan Society Media Fellow and in the fall will take up a teaching position and role as an advisor to the nascent free press in Guangdong at Guangdong University, and with Southern Weekend and other papers in Guangzhou, as a Knight International Press Fellow. She recently completed a U.S.-Japan Foundation Media Fellowship in Japan, and a Knight International Press Fellowship in China.

Kevin Quigleyis President of the National Peace Corps Association. Prior to this, he was acting CEO of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation where, among other things, he was working to set up a social investment fund providing rehabilitative services in post-conflict situations. He was formerly the Executive Director of the Global Alliance for Workers and Communities, an initiative working primarily in Asia involving public, private and non-profit institutions working through a participatory and transparent process to provide workers engaged in global manufacturing ways to improve their lives, workplaces, and communities. Before joining the Global Alliance, he was Vice President of Policy and Business Programs at the Asia Society. He has held positions in the U.S. government at the Office of Management Budget, in the U.S. Senate and as Vice-Chair of the Advisory Committee for Voluntary Foreign Aid. In addition, he has worked at a variety of research institutions: Guest Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; Resident Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and as a U.S.-Japan Leadership Fellow at the Keidanren in Tokyo. He is currently adjunct professor at the School of International Service at American University. He has a Ph.D. from Georgetown University, a Masters of International Affairs from Columbia University, a Masters in Anglo-Irish Studies from the National University of Ireland, and a Bachelors in Literature, History and Religion from Swarthmore College. Dr. Quigley is a frequent commentator on political and social events in Asia and the author of For Democracy's Sake and more than 30 book chapters, monographs and articles.

Gowher Rizvi is currently director of the Institute for Government Innovation. Prior to coming to Harvard, Dr. Rizvi taught at the University of Oxford and Warwick for over two decades; and more recently he was the head of the Ford Foundation in South Asia. He is a scholar of South Asia and is the author of a number of books including: South Asia in a Changing World, South Asian Insecurity and Great Powers (with Barry Buzan), and Bangladesh: The Struggle for Democracy. He is currently working on South Asian regional cooperation.

Barnett Rubin is Director of Studies and Senior Fellow at the Center on International Cooperation of New York University. He is also the Deputy Chair of the Conflict prevention and Peace Forum at the Social Science Research Council. During 1994-2000 he directed the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before that, Rubin was an Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for the Study of Central Asia at Columbia University. He has also held positions at Yale University and the United States Institute of Peace. Rubin is the author of several books on Afghanistan, including The Fragmentation of Afghanistan (1995, second edition 2002), and of Blood on the Doorstep: The Politics of Preventing Violent Conflict (The Century Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations, 2002). He is the co- author of Calming the Ferghana Valley: Development and Dialogue in the Heart of Central Asia (1999); Stabilizing Nigeria (1998); and the editor of Cases and Strategies for Preventive Action (1998), among others. Rubin served as advisor to Lakhdar Brahimi, UN SRSG on Afghanistan, during the UN Talks on Afghanistan in Bonn Germany and is a member of the advisory board of the Central Eurasia Project of the Open Society Institution. He also served on the Secretary of State's Advisory Committee on Religious Freedom Abroad (1996-8). He has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and a B.A., magna cum laude from Yale.

Nafis Sadik, a national of Pakistan, was educated at Loreto College (Calcutta) and received her Doctor of Medicine degree from Dow Medical College (Karachi). She served her internship in gynecology and obstetrics at City Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, and completed studies at The Johns Hopkins University, and as a research fellow in physiology at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario (Canada). Sadik began her profession in obstetrics and gynecology in rural communities in Pakistan, serving as a civilian medical officer in charge of women's and children's wards in various Pakistani armed forces hospitals, and was Pakistan's Director-General of the Central Family Planning Council responsible for developing, preparing and evaluating the country's health and family planning programme as part of the nation's development plan. In 1971, she joined the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) serving in various capacities until her appointment as its Executive Director in 1987. Upon her appointment, Sadik became one of the highest-ranking women in the UN system and the first woman, in the history of the United Nations, to lead one of its major voluntarily funded programmes. She is well known for her dynamism and guiding force in the field of reproductive and sexual health, including maternal and child health, and family planning issues. Under her able leadership as Secretary-General of the landmark International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), held in Cairo in 1994, the approach to reproductive health that includes empowering women through education and economic opportunity, was unanimously agreed to by the international community. Since her retirement from UNFPA in December 2000, Sadik serves as Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations and, most recently, was designated as his Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Asia. Sadik has consistently called attention to the importance of addressing the needs of women directly in making and carrying out development policy. Her contribution to improving the health of women and children of the global community has brought her many international awards and honours, including her selection as the Laureate, in the individual category, of the United Nations Population Award 2001, for her outstanding contribution to the awareness of population issues; an award presented by His Excellency President Soeharto for her participation in developing the family planning programme in Indonesia; an award from the Government of Pakistan for her contribution in the field of medicine; Order of Merit (First Class) decreed by His Excellency President Hosni Mubarak of the Arab Republic of Egypt in recognition of her efforts in the field of population and development and in the successful carrying out of the ICPD, 1994; the Hugh Moore Award for her leadership in the family planning field and in encouraging other women to find careers in the international population field, and the Margaret Sanger Award from Planned Parenthood Federation of America. In January 2002, Sadik was honored with the International Cooperation Prize in the 4th China Population Award, at the ceremony held in Beijing. Sadik is the recipient of honorary degrees from U.S. universities such as, Johns Hopkins, Brown, Duke, Michigan and Claremont, and 1998 Fellow, ad eundem, of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, United Kingdom. She is a member of the Association of Pakistani Physicians in the United States. Sadik is a member of the Board of Governors of the Foundation for Human Development and a member of the South Asian Commission on the Asian Challenge. She was the President of the Society for International Development (SID) from 1994-1997. Author of numerous publications in the areas of reproductive health and family, population and development, women, and gender and development, Sadik serves on the boards of various national and international organizations, universities and foundations.

Frances Seymour is the Director of the Institutions and Governance Program at the World Resources Institute, a position she has held since April 1998. As director, she has spearheaded WRI's efforts to influence international and national development policy on behalf of sustainable development through research and outreach on environmental governance. Seymour currently directs projects examining the impact of international financial flows on sustainable development as well as projects focusing on environmental governance issues in Southeast Asia. She also helped guide the launch of The Access Initiative, a global collaboration to promote respect for environmental procedural rights. She is the co-author of two WRI research publications - The Right Conditions: The World Bank, Structural Adjustment, and Forest Policy Reform and Leverage for the Environment: A Guide to the Private Financial Services Industry - and a chapter in Stumbling Towards Sustainability examining what actions have been taken by the U.S. Government to ensure that North-South financial flows promote rather than undermine sustainable development. She serves on the boards of the International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development, the University of North Carolina Center for International Studies, and the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch.

Jenny Springer is Director of the Livelihoods & Governance Program at the World Wildlife Fund-US. In this capacity, she works with a network of WWF offices and other partners on innovative approaches to community-based conservation and sustainable resource use across larger scales. A cultural anthropologist and Asia specialist by training, she has conducted field research in India and the Philippines, focusing on community-based natural resource management, local knowledge and the impacts of development and globalization. She has worked previously as a consultant to the Ford Foundation, as a program officer in the Luce Foundation's Asia Program, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ifugao Province, the Philippines. She did her undergraduate studies at Harvard University, and graduate work in Anthropology at the University of Chicago.

Kirk Talbott is President of First Voice International, a non-profit organization that owns satellite capacity to broadcast audio and multimedia information across all of Africa and Asia. First Voice provides a service to the hundreds of millions of Asians and Africans that live in remote areas or are underserved by infrastructure or opportunities. Before that he worked as a Senior Advisor to the World Space Corporation, the pioneering digital satellite radio company, on communications strategies for social change. Previously he was Vice President for Asia at Conservation International, Director of Finance and Policy for Asia and the Pacific at The Nature Conservancy, Senior Associate and Regional Director for Asia at the World Resources Institute, and an Associate at the International Law Institute. Talbott graduated from Georgetown University with a Law Degree and a Masters in International Relations in 1986 and has been a member of the DC Bar since 1987. He has a B.A. from Yale University and has taught and published widely.

Robert Templer is the Asia Program Director of the International Crisis Group, a non-profit organization that works through field-based analysis and high-level advocacy to resolve and prevent conflicts worldwide. Before joining ICG he worked as a columnist for the Asian Wall Street Journal and the Far Eastern Economic Review. Mr. Templer was formerly a visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley and a fellow of the Open Society Institute in New York. He previously worked in a number of countries in Asia, including Afghanistan, Vietnam, Pakistan, China and Taiwan. He is author of Shadows and Wind: A View of Modern Vietnam and has written widely on Asian politics, culture and history.

Mechai Viravaidya is Founder (1974) and Board Chairman of the Population and Community Development Association, and was elected to Thailand's Senate in 2000. He is a well-known pioneer in the battle against AIDS in Asia. In 1999, he was appointed as the Ambassador for UNAIDS. He has held a host of governmental positions, including Deputy Minister of Industry and Cabinet Spokesman. Dr. Viravaidya has also been a Visiting Scholar at the Harvard Institute for International Development, and a Research Associate at the Center for Population and Family Health at Columbia University. He has been the President of the Population and Development International (PDI) in Maryland and a Trustee at the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), Philippines. In 1997, he was awarded the United Nations Population Award (UNPA) in recognition of most outstanding contribution to the awareness of population questions and to their solutions. He was also awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1994 in recognition for mounting creative public campaigns in Thailand to promote family planning, rural development and AIDS prevention. He also received the Paul Hoffman Award and the United Nations Gold Peace Medal in 1981.