ANU Chancellor named top global thinker

ANU Chancellor Prfessor the Hon Gareth Evans AO QC. Photo by Belinda Pratten.

ANU Chancellor Professor the Hon Gareth Evans AO QC has been named one of Foreign Policy magazine’s Top Global Thinkers of 2011.

The annual list, which is judged by a group of prominent international peers, recognises the 100 individuals who have shaped the global conversation and world’s best ideas over the last 12 months.

Professor Evans has been named on the 2011 list with Special Adviser to the U.N. Secretary General, Frances Deng, for making the idea of a ’responsibility to protect’ more than an academic concept. According to Foreign Policy, the pair took the concept from "airy theory held by a small cadre of human rights advocates to a guiding principle of the world’s strongest military alliance".

Professor Evans and the other 2011 global thinkers will be honoured at a reception in Washington DC, and profiled in Foreign Policy’s third annual Global Thinkers issue. Other winners include Barack Obama, Aung San Suu Kyi, Condoleezza Rice, Alaa Al Aswany, Bill and Hilary Clinton and Desmond Tutu.

The Foreign Policy citation reads:

"Francis Deng and Gareth Evans played a prominent role in developing the intellectual scaffolding for R2P, as it’s clunkily called, and it received its first practical application this year in Libya.

"Evans chaired the blue-ribbon panel that came up with the term “responsibility to protect” in 2001 and was the first to bring the idea to prominence with a 2002 Foreign Affairs article arguing that the international community ’repeatedly made a mess of handling’ the interventions of the 1990s, most spectacularly in Somalia and Rwanda, and should adopt more rigorous standards. The United Nations agreed with him at its 2005 world summit, reflecting the growing consensus that state sovereignty is not a right, but a privilege."

Professor Evans spent 21 years in Australian politics, 13 of them as a Cabinet Minister. As Australia’s Foreign Minister he was internationally renowned for his roles in developing the UN peace plan for Cambodia, concluding the Chemical Weapons Convention, and initiating new Asia Pacific regional economic and security architecture.

In addition to his roles at ANU and the University of Melbourne, Professor Evans is President Emeritus of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, an independent global conflict prevention and resolution organisation which he led from 2000 to 2009.

He has co-chaired two major international commissions; one on intervention and state sovereignty (2000-2001) and the other on nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament (2008-2010).

Foreign Policy’s full list and Professor Evans’ full citation is available at http://www.foreignpolicy.com

For media inquiries: Catriona Jackson, ANU Media - 02 6125 5001 / 0417 142 238