- Club of Madrid
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The Club de Madrid is an independent non-profit organization created to promote democracy and change in the international community. Composed of 80 former Presidents and Prime Ministers from 56 countries, the Club de Madrid is the world’s largest forum of former Heads of State and Government.
Among its main goals are the strengthening of democratic institutions and counselling on the resolution of political conflicts in two key areas: democratic leadership and governance and response to crisis and post-crisis situations.
The Club de Madrid works together with governments, inter-governmental organizations, civil society, scholars and representatives from the business world, to encourage dialogue in order to foster social and political change. The Club de Madrid also works on the search for effective methods to provide technical advice and recommendations to transitional nations taking steps to establish democracy.
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Composition
There are currently 80 full Members, all of them previous government officials who have full voting rights — including such distinguished members as former Prime Minister of Canada, Kim Campbell, former Soviet Leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, former President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of the United States, Bill Clinton, former President of Ireland, Mary Robinson and former President of Spain, Adolfo Suárez. The Club also has institutional Members –those who belong to private and public organizations that share similar democratic objectives, including the Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior (FRIDE), and the Gorbachev Foundation of North America (GNFA), both original sponsors of the founding conference in 2001. Additionally, the Club de Madrid has several honorary Members, such as Kofi Annan and Aung San Suu Kyi; and fellows, who are experts on democratic changeover.
The Club is based in Madrid (Spain), although meetings are held worldwide. Currently Wim Kok, the former Prime Minister of The Netherlands (1994–2002), is the organization's President, and it also has two Vice Presidents: Jennifer Shipley (New Zealand) and César Gaviria (Colombia).
The Club was created from an unprecedented event that was held in October 2001 in Madrid, a four day Conference on Democratic Transition and Consolidation (CDTC). This event brought together 35 world leaders, over 100 esteemed academics and policy specialists from Europe, The Americas, Asia, and Africa to discuss ideas and means of implementation from both objective and subjective perspectives. The conference discussed eight main topics:
- Constitutional design
- The Legislative branch and its relation with the Executive branch
- The Judicial branch and its relation with Executive branch
- Anti-corruption procedures
- The role of the armed forces and security forces
- Reform of the state bureaucracy
- Strengthening of political and social pluralism and of political parties
- Economic and social conditions.
Structure and Organization
The Club de Madrid's primary asset is its membership, which includes more than 80 distinguished former heads of state and government of democratic nations. The comparative advantage of the Club de Madrid is based on the following key assets:
- Personal experience and status of its Members.
- Access to the world’s leading experts on democracy.
- Specialization in democratic transition and consolidation issues.
- Practical approach of its activities, through the implementation of projects with tangible results.
Full Members are members of the Club de Madrid who provide their personal and political experience as former Heads of State and Government. Their appointment, based on a proposal from the Board of Directors, is approved by the General Assembly.
Direct exchanges with current leaders of countries in the process of democratic transition on a peer-to-peer basis, and the Member’s ability to deliver the right message at the right time are two of the major assets of the Club de Madrid. In this sense, the Members of the Club de Madrid can also help focus much needed international attention on targeted countries and leverage the work of other institutions trying to promote democracy.
The Club's members are supported by a network of world-class experts who work together to offer assistance on a range of democratic reform issues. The Club de Madrid is composed of four executive and advisory bodies:
- General Assembly
- Board of Directors
- General Secretariat
- Advisory Committee
List of members
- Valdas Adamkus - Former President of Lithuania
- Esko Aho - Former Prime Minister of Finland
- Martti Ahtisaari - Former President of Finland
- Abdul Karim al-Iryani - Former Prime Minister of Yemen
- Sadiq al-Mahdi - Former Prime Minister of Sudan
- Óscar Arias - Former President of Costa Rica
- Álvaro Arzú - Former President of Guatemala
- Patricio Aylwin - Former President of Chile
- José María Aznar - Former Prime Minister of Spain
- Michelle Bachelet - Former President of Chile
- Belisario Betancur - Former President of Colombia
- Carl Bildt - Former Prime Minister of Sweden
- Valdis Birkavs - Former Prime Minister of Latvia
- Kjell Magne Bondevik - Former Prime Minister of Norway
- Gro Harlem Brundtland - Former Prime Minister of Norway
- Kim Campbell - Former Prime Minister of Canada
- Fernando Henrique Cardoso - Former President of Brazil
- Aníbal Cavaco Silva - President of Portugal
- Joaquim Chissano - Former President of Mozambique
- Bill Clinton - Former President of the United States of America
- Filip Dimitrov - Former Prime Minister of Bulgaria
- Leonel Fernández - President of the Dominican Republic (on leave)
- José María Figueres Olsen - Former President of Costa Rica
- Vigdís Finnbogadóttir - Former President of Iceland
- Vicente Fox - Former President of Mexico
- Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle - Former President of Chile
- Yasuo Fukuda - Former Prime Minister of Japan
- César Gaviria - Former President of Colombia
- Amine Gemayel - Former President of Lebanon
- Felipe González Márquez - Former Prime Minister of Spain
- Mikhail Gorbachev - Former President of the Soviet Union
- Inder Kumar Gujral - Former Prime Minister of India
- Alfred Gusenbauer - Former Federal Chancellor of Austria
- António Guterres - Former Prime Minister of Portugal
- Han Seung-soo - Former Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea
- Václav Havel - Former President of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic
- Osvaldo Hurtado - Former President of Ecuador
- Lionel Jospin - Former Prime Minister of France
- Helmut Kohl - Former Chancellor Germany
- Wim Kok - Former Prime Minister of the Netherlands
- Alpha Oumar Konaré - Former President of Mali
- Milan Kučan - Former President of Slovenia
- John Kufuor - Former President of Ghana
- Chandrika Kumaratunga - Former President of Sri Lanka
- Luis Alberto Lacalle - Former President of Uruguay
- Ricardo Lagos - Former President of Chile
- Zlatko Lagumdžija - Former Prime Minister of Bosnia & Herzegovina
- Lee Hong-koo - Former Prime Minister of the Republic of Korea
- António Mascarenhas Monteiro - Former President of Cape Verde
- Sir Quett Ketumile Joni Masire - Former President of Botswana
- Tadeusz Mazowiecki - Former Prime Minister of Poland
- Rexhep Meidani - Former President of the Republic of Albania
- Benjamin Mkapa - President of the United Republic of Tanzania
- Festus Mogae - Former President of Botswana
- Olusegun Obasanjo - Former President of Nigeria
- Anand Panyarachun - Former Prime Minister of Thailand
- Andrés Pastrana - Former President of Colombia
- P.J. Patterson - Former Prime Minister of Jamaica
- Javier Pérez de Cuéllar - Former Prime Minister of Peru and former Secretary General of the United Nations
- Romano Prodi - Former President of the EC and Prime Minister of Italy
- Jorge Quiroga - Former President of Bolivia
- Fidel V. Ramos - Former President of the Republic of the Philippines
- Poul Nyrup Rasmussen - Former Prime Minister of Denmark
- Mary Robinson - Former President of Ireland and former United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
- Petre Roman - Former Prime Minister of Romania
- Jorge Sampaio - Former President of Portugal
- Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada - Former President of Bolivia
- Julio María Sanguinetti - Former President of Uruguay
- Jenny Shipley - Former Prime Minister of New Zealand
- Fuad Siniora - Former Prime Minister of Lebanon
- Mário Soares - Former President of Portugal
- Adolfo Suárez - Former Prime Minister of Spain
- Hanna Suchocka - Former Prime Minister of Poland
- Alejandro Toledo - Former President of Peru
- Cassam Uteem - Former President of the Republic of Mauritius
- Guy Verhofstadt - Former Prime Minister of Belgium
- Vaira Vike-Freiberga - Former President of Latvia
- Ernesto Zedillo - Former President of Mexico
Honorary Members:
- Kofi Annan - Former Secretary General of the United Nations
- Jimmy Carter - Former President of the United States
- Jacques Delors - Former President of the European Commission
- Aung San Suu Kyi - Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Notes
External links
- Club Of Madrid
- FRIDE www.fride.org
Categories:- International nongovernmental organizations
- Organisations based in Spain
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