Jiří Dienstbier

Senator, Chairman of the Comitee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Security
Former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Czechoslovakia

• Graduated from the Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University, Prague
• In the sixties journalist and correspondent of the Czechoslovak Radio in the Far East, Europe and the United States
• Signatary of the Charter 77 and twice its spokesman (1979 and 1985). In prison for the activities in the Committee for Defense of Unjustly Persecuted (1979-1982). During twenty years of the „normalization“ after the Societ invasion edited samizdat news and chaired the editorial board of Lidové noviny
• Founder and Chairman of the Czech Council on Foreign Relations (1994 - )
• Member of the Commission on Global Governance for UN reform (1992-2000)
• Special Rapporteur of the UN Commission on Human Rights in Yugoslavia, Bosnia nad Hezegovina and Croatia (1998-2001)
• Visiting Professor: Claremont Graduate School (California), University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, Brown University (Rhode Island). Lectured at the Hebrew University (Jerusalem), Philosophical Faculty of the Charles University and the College of the International and Public Relations (1997-2006)
• Author and political commentator
• Director and Trustee Reuters Founders Share Company (from 2005)