Dr. José Ramos-Horta
Dr. José Ramos-Horta, President of East Timor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, was born December 26, 1949, in Dili, East Timor and was educated in a Catholic mission school in the village of Soibada. He trained as a journalist and worked as a radio and TV correspondent from 1969 to 1974.
After studying law in the United States, he returned to East Timor (then under Portuguese rule) to participate in the independence movement. When the Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor gained control of the government in November, 1975 Ramos-Horta was appointed foreign minister. However, this was short lived when the Indonesia military
invaded East Timor and he was forced into exile.
Eventually Ramos-Horta settled in Sydney, Australia where he joined the faculty of the
University of New South Wales and became one of the leading voices for East Timor. In 1996, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with fellow countryman Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo for sustained efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict of East Timor based on a people’s right to self determination.
In 1999 Ramos-Horta returned home after the UN Security Council established the UN
Transition Administration in East Timor. He continued his push toward peace and reconciliation and was appointed East Timor’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation in 2000 — a post he held until East Timor achieved full sovereignty in 2002.
In 2006, fighting erupted in East Timor soon after Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri fired hundreds of soldiers who had gone on strike to protest against discrimination. Criticized for his handling of the crisis, Prime Minister Alkatiri resigned and was replaced by Ramos-Horta, who took office in July 2006. In May 2007, Ramos-Horta was elected president and has held the post ever since. Over the years, Ramos-Horta has actively participated in numerous international conferences dealing with self-determination and de-colonization, human rights, law of the sea, world criminal court and small arms and disarmament.
He is a Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and a distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. He is acting president of the East Timor Cultural Centre in Dili; a member of the Council of Honour at the University of Peace in Costa Rica; and co-president of the State of the World
Forum based in San Francisco.
Ramos-Horta has been honoured with several major international awards including the Gold Medal from the President of Italy, the First Hague Peace Appeal Award and the Gran Cross of the Order of Freedom from President of Portugal.
Dr. Ramos-Horta is currently recovering from an attempt on his life that took place February 2008, preventing him from travelling to Canada today to accept his honorary degree in person.
