History
The Elders is chaired by Kofi Annan and consists of nine Elders and two honorary Elders. Desmond Tutu served for six years as Chair before stepping down in May 2013, and remains an Honorary Elder.
The group was initiated by Richard Branson and musician and human rights activist Peter Gabriel together with anti-apartheid activist and former South African President Nelson Mandela. Mandela announced the formation of the group on his 89th birthday on 18 July 2007 in Johannesburg, South Africa.
At the launch ceremony, an empty chair was left on stage for Aung San Suu Kyi, the human rights activist who was a political prisoner in Burma/Myanmar at the time. Present at the launch were Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Graça Machel, Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson, Desmond Tutu, Muhammad Yunus and Li Zhaoxing. Members who were not present at the launch were Ela Bhatt, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Lakhdar Brahimi and Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
The Elders are funded by a group of donors who are named on the Advisory Council. Over the first three years, US$18 million was raised to fund The Elders' work.
Read more about this topic: The Elders (organization)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“It may be well to remember that the highest level of moral aspiration recorded in history was reached by a few ancient Jews—Micah, Isaiah, and the rest—who took no count whatever of what might not happen to them after death. It is not obvious to me why the same point should not by and by be reached by the Gentiles.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“In the history of the United States, there is no continuity at all. You can cut through it anywhere and nothing on this side of the cut has anything to do with anything on the other side.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)