Special Advisors to the G8 Research Group

Daisaku Ikeda, Soka Gakkai International
David Malone, International Peace Academy
David Runnalls, President, International Institute for Sustainable Development
John Sewell, Overseas Development Council

Special advisors are prominent individuals from the global community who have agreed to share their insights and expertise with the G8 research group and its members, in their special areas of competence as they relate to the specific issues dealt with by the G7/G8.

Daisaku Ikeda

President, Soka Gakkai International Tokyo, Japan
Special Advisor on International Peace and Human Security

Daisaku Ikeda is president of the Soka Gakkai International (SGI), a worldwide association of 76 organizations with membership in over 163 countries and territories. The SGI has undertaken activities for refugee relief as well as a broad-based program of public information and education on such global issues as disarmament, environment and development, and human rights.

Mr. Ikeda has founded several institutions, including the Soka University, the Boston Research Center for the 21st Century, and the Toda Institute for Global Peace and Policy Research. He has also initiated a wide range of grassroots exchange programs and spoken at a number of institutions around the world, including Harvard University, the Institut de France and Beijing University. He has received numerous awards, including the United Nations Peace Award, National Order of the Southern Cross of the Republic of Brazil, Honorary Cross of Science and the Arts from the Austrian Ministry of Education, Medal of the Grand Officer of Arts and Letters from the French Ministry of Culture, and the World Poet Laureateship from the World Poetry Society. He is author of The Human Revolution (12 volumes), Choose Life: A Dialogue with Dr. Arnold J. Toynbee, A Lifelong Quest for Peace with Dr. Linus Pauling, Dialogue of World Citizens with Dr. Norman Cousins, Choose Peace, with Dr. Johan Galtung, among others.

David Malone

President, International Peace Academy
New York, NY
Special Advisor on Conflict Prevention and Human and International Security

David Malone became president of the International Peace Academy on November 1, 1998, on leave from the Government of Canada. A career Canadian Foreign Service officer and occasional scholar, 1994 and 1998 he was successively Director General of the Policy, International Organizations and Global Issues Bureaus of the Canadian Foreign and Trade Ministry. During this period he also acquired a D.Phil. from Oxford University with a thesis on decision making in the UN Security Council.

From 1992 to 1994, he was Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Canada to the United Nations, where he chaired the negotiations of the UN Special Committee on Peacekeeping Operations (the Committee of 34) and the UN General Assembly consultations on peacekeeping issues. From 1990 to 1992, he represented Canada on the UN's Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) and related bodies. Earlier foreign assignments took him to Egypt, Kuwait, and Jordan.

Born in 1954, he is a graduate of l'Université de Montréal, of the American University in Cairo and of Harvard University. He was a Guest Scholar in the Economic Studies Program of the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, and a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto, 1988-89. He served as an Adjunct Professor of International Relations in Columbia University's Graduate School of International and Public Affairs, 1991-94. Since 1991, he has been a Senior Associate Fellow of Massey College in the University of Toronto. In May 1998, he was appointed an Adjunct Research Professor in the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University (Ottawa). Since March 1999, he has been an Adjunct Professor at the New York University School of Law. He has published extensively on peace and security issues but also enjoys writing on less weighty topics.

David Runnalls

President, International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)

David Runnalls is President of IISD and also serves as Co-Chair of the China Council Working Group on Environment and Trade.

David has served as Senior Advisor to the President of the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) in Ottawa, Canada, and to the Administrator of the United Nations Development Program.

Previously, David was Director of the Environment and Sustainable Development Program at the Institute for Research on Public Policy in Ottawa. He worked with Barbara Ward to found the International Institute for Environment and Development and directed both its London and Washington offices.

David was the Canadian Board member of IUCN-the World Conservation Union for six years and the Chair of the Committee for the World Conservation Congress in 1996. He is a member of the Boards of the World Environment Center (New York), IIED (London) and Pollution Probe (Toronto).

An occasional writer and broadcaster, he has served as environment columnist for the CBC radio program, As it Happens and for CTV's Canada am. He was a member of the Discovery Channel's regular environment panel and political columnist for the Earth Times, the paper of record for the United Nations Earth Summit in 1992.

John Sewell

President, Overseas Development Council
Washington DC
Special Advisor on Development

John W. Sewell has been President of the ODC since 1980. Under his leadership, ODC has compiled a distinguished record of policy research and analysis on U.S. development interests and policies. His current policy and research interests focus on how the forces of globalization have affected the relationships between the old industrial countries, the new emerging economic powers in Asian and Latin America, and the poorer countries that risk marginalization. In addition, Mr. Sewell has written extensively on the reform of the American foreign aid program, and led an ODC project that for several years issued an alternative foreign aid affairs budget.

Mr. Sewell's areas of expertise include globalization and development; global governance; U.S. multilateral policies; foreign aid; new patterns of development cooperation; U.S. economic, political, and social interests in developing countries; and U.S.-Japan development cooperation.

He testifies frequently at the request of the U.S. Congress and lectures often at major universities, government agencies and private institutions, including Harvard University, Columbia University, and the University of Toronto.

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	Please send comments to: g7@utoronto.ca This page was last updated August 15, 2024.