Juan Manuel Santos (Bogotá, 73 years old), former president of Colombia and Nobel Peace Prize winner, replaces Mary Robinson as president of The Elders, the organization of global leaders founded by South African Nelson Mandela in 2007 to fight for peace, rights humans, justice and sustainability. The South American politician has belonged to the organization since 2019, one year after the end of his eight-year term as president and three after the signing of the historic peace agreement with the FARC guerrilla that marked his Administration.
“It is a great privilege and a great honor to be President of The Elders. Almost thirty years ago I met Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg and we had a long conversation about the importance of peace for our two countries. I remember very well that he concluded our talk by saying ‘without peace, Colombia will never take off,’ the former president said upon learning of the announcement. “I think The Elders can play a fundamental role in the very complex world. It will not be easy to fill Mary Robinson’s position.”
The Irishwoman has led the organization since 2018, in a position whose predecessors were Desmond Tutu and Kofi Annan. President of her country between 1990 and 1997, and High Commissioner of the United Nations for Human Rights between that year and 2002, Robinson was the first female president of her country and one of the first in the world, with a marked accent as a feminist and human rights leader. Robinson will continue to play an active role as Elder. “In these times of profound global uncertainty, I know that Juan Manuel will guide us with his infallible sense of duty, diplomacy and dedication,” he said. Also on the list of members of the organization are former presidents such as Jimmy Carter of the United States, Helen Clark of New Zealand, Ricardo Lagos of Chile or Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil; former UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon; or the Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus.
As a member of The Elders, Santos has been especially involved in conflict resolution and prevention work, including a visit to Ukraine in August 2022 with Ban Ki-moon, in which several members of the group met with President Volodymyr Zelensky. and with victims of Russian atrocities in Bucha and Irpin. He has also supported the work of The Elders on the climate crisis, and has represented them in sessions of the UN Security Council and in meetings such as the Munich Security Conference or the High Level Week of the UN General Assembly.
The former president, economist and business administrator from the University of Kansas with master’s degrees in Economics from the London School of Economics and in Public Administration from Harvard, came to Colombian public life in 1991 as Minister of Foreign Trade under the liberal César Gaviria. He came from being deputy director of the country’s main newspaper, The Timethen owned by his family. In 2000 he reached another portfolio, that of the Treasury, charged by the conservative Andrés Pastrana with facing a strong economic crisis that his country experienced at the turn of the century. After a third stint in the Cabinet, as Defense Minister of the right-wing Álvaro Uribe Vélez, he became president in 2010, driven by him. His determination to negotiate peace with what was the oldest armed guerrilla in America led him to distance himself from Uribe, to endure strong criticism from the hardest right and, after a failed plebiscite to endorse an agreement, to achieve the signing of the historic pact.