First Chair

“I don’t want yet again to be wringing my hands, in a few months or years, about something close to ethnic cleansing or genocidal war crimes that we failed to investigate or prevent while there was still time.”

Edward Mortimer CMG (1943 – 2021)

He was the first Chair of the Sri Lanka Campaig

From 1998 to 2006 he served as chief speechwriter and (from 2001) as director of communications to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He spent much of his career as a journalist, first with The Times of London, where he developed an expertise in Middle East affairs, and later with the Financial Times, where from 1987 to 1998 he was the main commentator and columnist on foreign affairs. From 2007 to 2011 he was Senior Vice-President and Chief Programme Officer at the Salzburg Global Seminar.

Mr. Mortimer also served as a fellow and/or faculty at several institutions, including the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the International Institute of Strategic Studies, and (as Honorary Professor) the University of Warwick; and on the governing bodies of several non-governmental organizations, including Chatham House, the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, the John Stuart Mill Institute, the 21st Century Trust, Minority Rights Group International, the Agence France-Presse Foundation and the Children’s Radio Foundation. He is President of the British Association of Former UN Civil Servants.

Read our tribute to Edward.