Ms Eve Crowley
Officer-in-Charge, Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division, FAO

Officer-in-Charge, Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division, FAO, FAO Specialist in Rural Employment and Poverty Reduction, Dr. Eve Crowley. has acted as facilitator for the initiative launched and developed in the context of the World Summit for Sustainable Development called the Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development Initiative (SARDI). The SARD Initiative is a civil society-led, government- and inter-governmental-supported, and FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations)-facilitated initiative. In this context, Eve Crowley's role within FAO has been Task Manager for Chapter 14 of Agenda 21, one of the major outcomes of the 1992 Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit. Chapter 14 deals with sustainable agriculture and rural development.

Prof. Asbjørn Eide
Senior Fellow, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights;

President of the Advisory Committee on the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities is former Director and presently senior fellow of the Norwegian Center for Human Rights at the University of Oslo. He was previously a Director of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo, a former Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association, and the author of numerous books and articles on peace and conflict issues and human rights. He has been Professor at the University of Gøteborg, Sweden and is presently visiting professor at the University of Lund. He was a member from 1981 to 2003 of the United Nations Sub-Commission on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and from 1995 to 2004 the Chairman of the United Nations Working Group on the Rights of Minorities. He is the main author of the General Comment 12 on the right to food.

Mr David Nabarro
Assistant Secretary-General, Coordination on Avian & Pandemic Influenza and the Global Food Crisis (UNSIC);

Assistant Secretary-General, was appointed Coordinator of the Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis in January 2009.
The Task Force was established by the United Nations Secretary-General in April, 2008. Composed of the heads of specialized agencies, funds and programmes, the Bretton Woods institutions, and relevant parts of the UN Secretariat, it is chaired by the UN Secretary-General, with FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf serving as Vice-Chairman.
The primary aim of the Task Force is to promote a comprehensive and unified response to the challenge of achieving global food security, including by facilitating the creation of a prioritized plan of action and coordinating its implementation.
Before joining the High level task force, David Nabarro was appointed as United Nations (UN) System Senior Coordinator for Avian and Human Influenza by Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General, on September 25th 2005. He has been seconded to this position, at the level of UN Assistant Secretary-General, by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Prof. Siddiqur Osmani
School of Economics of Ulster University;

Siddiqur Osmani is a Professor of Development Economics at the University of Ulster, United Kingdom. In  1974 he got a MSc. Econ (with Distinction), London School of Economics, followed by a  PhD. Econ, London School of Economics in 1978.
His current teaching areas are Development Economics and Trade and Growth. While his research fields also include: Poverty, Nutrition, Income distribution Growth and development. He worked as personal adviser to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on matters related to economic rights (from May 1999 to September 2001).
He previously worked at the World Institute for Development Economics Research in Helsinki and the Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies, Dhaka.

Mr Flavio Valente
Secretary-General, Face It Act Now (FIAN) International;

Flavio Luiz Schieck Valente has been, since February 2007, the Secretary General of FIAN International, working out of Heidelberg, Germany. Flavio was, from 2002 to 2007, the National Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Adequate Food, Water and rural Land, in Brazil, for the National Economic, Social, and Cultural Human Rights Project, coordinated by the Brazilian ESCHR Platform, in partnership with the United Nations Volunteers Program and the Office of the Federal Prosecutor for the Rights of the Citizen. He was for many years theTechnical coordinator of ABRANDH (Brazilian Action for Nutrition and Human Rights) a Civil Society organization linked to the World Alliance for Nutrition and Human Rights (WANAHR), and since 1998, a member of the coordination of the Brazilian Forum for Food and Nutritional Security (FBSAN).

Mr Hafez Ghanem
Assistant Director-General, Economic and Social Development Department, will moderate the Panel.

Mr Ghanem was appointed Assistant Director-General, Economic and Social Development Department (ES) on 2 November 2007.  
 Mr Ghanem holds a B.A. and an M.A. in Economics (Economic Development and International Trade) from the American University in Cairo, Egypt, and a PhD in Economics (Trade, Econometrics) from the University of California, Davis, USA. Mr Ghanem began his professional career with the World Bank in Washington D.C. in 1983.  Between 1995 and 1997, he served as Principal Economist for Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.  From 1997 to 2000, he worked successively as Sector Leader, Public Economics and Trade Policy for Europe and Central Asia Region.  Subsequently, he was appointed as the World Bank’s Country Director in Madagascar, Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles.  Since 2004, he served as Country Director in Nigeria.