Alberto-Chau Huu, Maria Fe

Maria Fe Alberto-Chau Huu is agricultural attaché of the  permanent Mission of the Philippines to the United Nations and other International Organizations in Geneva. In addition, since 1998 she is the ASEAN coordinator for matters related to the WTO  Committee on Agriculture. She was a member of the Philippine Team to the five WTO Ministerial Conferences in 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, and 2003. Furthermore, she has worked as an agricultural analyst at the Philippine Embassy to Belgium from 1990 to 1996 and as an agricultural Development Specialist for the Philippine government from 1989-1990. In addition, she is part of  the Philippine team in the formal dispute settlement case against Australias’s import restrictions on fresh fruits and vegetables and she is ASEAN coordinator for matters related to the WTO Committee on Agriculture (COA) and Committee on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures (SPS).
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and has absolved post graduate studies on International Trade Relations.

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Francisco, Josefa "Gigi" S.

Gigi Francisco is the Executive Director of the Women and Gender Institute at Miriam Colleges (Philippines).
In addition, she is Asia Coordinator of International Gender & Trade Network (IGTN) and Southeast Asia Coordinator for Development Alternatives with Women for the New Era (DAWN).
She works in the Secretariat, Asia Pacific Women Watch/ South East Asia Watch and is faculty member of International Studies Department, Miriam College.

She is engaged in several international networks: founding member of Asian Peace Alliance and Asia Pacific Network on Food Sovereignty, member of International Council for Adult Education and International South Group Network.

Garcia Frias, Zoraida

Zoraida Garcia is Programme Officer for Gender and Development Service at the FAO in Rome, Italy. She is responsible for the coordination of country studies and research on different relevant topics in which gender and social disparities have a key incidence for agricultural and rural development. In addition, she provides technical assistance to governmental and non-governmental institutions on policy issues regarding Gender/WID in agriculture.
Zoraida Garcia is Dominican. She holds a M.Sc. Economics.

Latest Publications:

• Impact of Agricultural Trade on Gender Equity and Rural Women’s Position in Developing Countries, 2005;
• Gender and Land – Compendium of Country Case Studies, 2005

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Jayati Ghosh is currently Professor and Chairperson of the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, England in 1983. She has worked as an economist for the Government of India as well as for numerous international organizations in a part-time capacity, and is closely associated with a number of social movements and left organizations, so that she is actively involved in policy debates both within and outside the country.

She has written three books and co-edited two others, and written nearly one hundred academic articles in various journals. She writes regular columns for a fortnightly newsmagazine, a major financial daily and two national newspapers. She was recently Chairperson of the Commission on Farmers Welfare which submitted its reported to the State Government of Andhra Pradesh in December 2004. At present she is a member of the Knowledge Commission set up by the Government of India. She is also currently the (Honorary) Executive Secretary of International Development Economics Associates (IDEAs) a South-based network of heterodox development economists.

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Arze Glipo is Executive Director of the Integrated Rural Development Foundation (IRDF). She is responsible for conceptualizing development projects based on community needs assessment. Since 2002 as convenor of the Asia-Pacific Network for Food Sovereignty she leads the network’s major campaigns and conducts research on the topics of agriculture, trade, women and small farmers.

In 2001 she has convened the Task Force Food Sovereignity, Philippines, a national coalition of farmer organizations, NGO’s, women’s movements and civil society groups advocating for policy reforms in agriculture and trade in the Philippines.

She is Filipino. Arze Glipo holds a Diploma in Development Economics (1996) and is currently working on her M.A. thesis in Development Economics.

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She holds Masters Degrees in Political Science and Global Political Economy and is currently working on a PhD on Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Intellectual Property Rights. She has worked extensively on the issues of biodiversity and access to genetic resources under the conditions of globalising intellectual property regimes, including in the Heinrich-Böll-Foundation's Regional Office in El Salvador and a Cooperative Research Project aimed at "Developing Agrobiodiversity".

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Nazneen Kanji is Senior Research Associate at the International Institute for Environment and Development. She is responsible on the Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Livelihoods Programme. She has extensive research, consultancy and field experience in Africa and Asia. Currently her main project is ‚Gender, Markets and Livelihoods: a study of the Cashew Sector‘. The study analyzes the effects of liberalisation on the livelihoods of producers (farmers) and workers in the processing sector in Mozambique and India.

She was born in Tanzania and holds a PhD from London School of Economics and Political Science. She lectures at the London School of Economics and works as resource person for the Network for Comparative Research on Poverty (CROP) at the University of Bergen, Norway. She is also a member of the Gender Expert Group on Trade, Department of Trade and Industry, UK.

Latest Publications:

• Cashing in on Cashew Nuts: Women Producers and Factory Workers in Mozambique (coauthored), in: M. Carr (ed.) Chains of Fortune: Linking Women Producers and Workers with Global Markets. Commonwealth Secretariat, London, 2004;
• Mind the Gap: Mainstreaming gender and participation in development. Institutionalising Participation Series, IIED and IDS, 2003

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Nana Künkel holds a master in agricultural economics and in political science. Since November 2001 she is employed as research associate at the Department of Agricultural Economics of Humboldt University. Her research interests cover agricultural and environmental policies with a special focus on international agricultural development. She is currently workiong on socioeconomic causes of soil degradation in Asia.

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Currently Aileen Kwa is doing a consultancy with UNDP on trade. Prior to this work she was working as Trade Analyst for Focus on the Global South in Geneva. In this function she provided policy advice to developing country government trade negotiators on trade issues.
From 1994 –1996 she was networking and capacity-building of civil society groups on trade issues for the Centre for Environment, Gender and Development (ENGENDER) in Singapore. As Research Officer her main focus is on the topics of Women, Economy and Development. Aileen Kwa holds a M.A. in Education.

Latest Publications:

• 2004, July: „Cancun and Its Aftermath: „Multilateralism“ Without Goodwill, in Behind the Scenes at the WTO: The Real World of International Trade Negotiations, Jawara F. and Kwa A., Zed Books, Second Edition;
• 2004, March: Agriculture Negotiations: More Trouble Ahead for the Third World, Focus on Trade #98, April 2004

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Mayet, Mariam

Mariam Mayet, Master of Laws (LLM), is founder and Director of the African Centre for Biosafety (ACB). The African Centre for Biosafety was conceived in response to the assessed urgent need to address the actual and potential risks posed by genetic engineering (GE) on the African continent by campaigning for GMOs to be subject to the most stringent biosafety measures.

The ACB (http://www.biosafetyafrica.net/) is committed to promoting the publication of the views and concerns of African civil society groups on the African continent and world wide on issues relating to biosafety and solidarity amongst these groups.

Prior to her current position she was advisor for Greenpeace International and worked on the World Summit on Sustainable Development and as member of the international trade team for WTO Ministerial she attended the 5th WTO Ministerial Conference in Cancun 2003.

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Akinyi Nzioki is Executive Director and Chief Consultant of the Centre for Land Economy, and Rights of Women (CLEAR). Since June 2004 to date she is the chairperson of Socio-Cultural Equity Thematic Group for the National Land Policy Formulation Process in Kenya. In 1999, she has done consultancy work for the UN Economic Commission for Africa–Eastern Africa Sub-Regional Development Centre on developing Modalities and Strategies for Women’s Access to Ownership of Land in Eastern Africa. Akinyi Nzioki was born in Kenya. She holds a PhD. in Philosophy – Anthropology.
Latest publications:

• September, 2004, „The National Land Policy in Kenya. Critical Gender Issues and Policy Statements“, Women’s Land Rights Issue No.1 of Kenya Land Alliance;
• September, 2002, "Gender Aspects of Land Reform, Constitutional Principles", Kenya Land Alliance

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Randriamaro, Zo

Zo Randriamaro is a gender and human rights activist from Dakar. She is a sociologist by training and has served as an expert on gender, economic and trade issues for the major international development organizations, including United Nations agencies and USAID.  She was the former Manager of the Gender and Economic Reforms in Africa (GERA) regional programme, and has recently joined the Board of Directors of the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO).

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Ribeiro, Silvia

Silvia Ribeiro is a researcher and programme manager with ETC group, based in Mexico. She has a background as a publisher, journalist and environmental campaigner in Uruguay, Brazil and Sweden.
She has extensive experience in social and environmental advocacy. As a civil society representative, she has attended and followed the negotiations of several of United Nations environmental treaties. She has also been an invited speaker at many civil society events around the world speaking on biopiracy, transgenics, corporate concentration, intellectual property, and indigenous and farmers' rights.
Silvia has produced a number of articles related to biodiversity, genetic resources, intellectual property and biopiracy, among other issues. She has been published in Latin American, European and North American magazines and papers. From 1994-1999, she was the editor of the Latin American magazine "Biodiversidad, sustento y culturas", published by Friends of the Earth Uruguay in collaboration with Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN). She is now a member of its international advisory editorial committee.

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Heinrich Boell Foundation, Head International Politics Team
She studied Geography, Sociology and Agricultural Sciences in Berlin. Since the early  Eighties she has been professionally engaged in North-South Cooperation and Development Politics. She worked as a journalist for the magazine „Entwicklungspolitische Korrespondenz“ and as an Information Officer for the NGO „Action for World Solidarity“.
For several years she also worked as trainer and consultant  in the fields of media, women’s and gender issues, rural development. Numerous field trips to Africa and Latin America.
At HBF she started as Head of the International Scholarship Desk, since 2001 she is Head of the International Politics Team.

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is an Iranian rural sociologist, living in Berlin. She is a lecturer and responsible for the unit: “Gender research in rural areas” at the Faculty of Agriculture and Horticulture at Humboldt University of Berlin. Her fields of research are the socio-cultural dimensions of sustainable development, the engendering of agricultural policy and the cultural ecology of nutrition.

She is currently working on the effects of CAP reform and WTO negotiations on rural development and food security in developing countries. She has conducted a number of field studies in Iran, in Sudan, in Germany and many in European countries.

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Since 2000, Karin Ulmer is the Policy and Gender officer at the Association of World Council of Churches related Development Organisations in Europe (APRODEV) in Brussels. Previous to this, she was Senior Administrator at the Network Women in Development Europe (WIDE), and has been working as an administrator for the European Network on Debt and Development in Brussels.
She holds a M.A. in Comparative European Social Science.
Latest Publications:

• Are trade agreements with the EU beneficial to women in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific? Gender, Development and Trade Journal, Oxfam GB, 2004
• Gender and Trade, Briefing Paper, EAA: Trade for Poeple not People for Trade, Geneva, 2003
• Everywhere and Nowhere: Assessing Gender Mainstreaming in European Community Development Cooperation, Aprodev/One World Action, October 2002
  

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Member of the Executive Board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
Barbara Unmüßig was born in 1956 in Freiburg/Breisgau. She has one son.
From 1976-1981 she studied Political Science at the Free University of Berlin. She holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science.
From 1982-1985 Barbara Unmüßig worked as a journalist and editor for a Third-World Journal in Freiburg. From 1985-1990 she was a research assistant for the Green Parliamentarian group in the German Bundestag.
In 1990 she co-founded the organisation World Economy, Ecology & Development (WEED) and has since then been president of the organisation. From 1993 till March 2002 she has been executive member of the board of WEED.
From 1991-1992 she was co-ordinator of the German environment and development organisations in the UNCED-process. In 1993 she co-founded the German NGO-Forum Environment and Development and became its spokeswoman till March 2002.
In 2000 she was founding member of the „German Institute for Human Rights (DIMR).
For more then twenty years she is an expert in international environment and North-South-policies. Her special focus has been on the activities of the Bretton Woods Institutions, on international debt issues, as well as on the German foreign trade, development aid and environmental governance and policies. She has been active in numerous national and international NGO networks has published extensively on different issues.
Barbara Unmüßig has been a member of the Executive Board of the Heinrich Böll Foundation since May 2002. She is responsible for the development of programms and strategies in Lateinamerica, Africa, Asia and the Middle East.
She holds also the strategic and programmatic responsibilty for the Feminist Institute within the Foundation and for gender democracy, which is one of the main tenets of the Foundation and a common task of all members of staff.