Mary Robinson

Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, spoke on March 25, 2015 in Wait Chapel for the Voices of Our Time speaker series. Her talk was titled: The Human Face of Environmental Inequality.

Mary Robinson is President of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice. She served as President of Ireland from 1990-1997 and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1997-2002. She is a member of the Elders and the Club of Madrid and the recipient of numerous honors and awards including the Presidential Medal of Freedom from the President of the United States Barack Obama. She is also a member of the Lead Group of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement. Between March 2013 and August 2014 Mary served as the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa. In August 2014 she was appointed the United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change.

A former President of the International Commission of Jurists and former chair of the Council of Women World Leaders she was President and founder of Realizing Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative from 2002-2010 and served as Honorary President of Oxfam International from 2002-2012.

Mary Robinson serves as Patron of the Board of the Institute of Human Rights and Business in addition to being a board member of several organisations including the Mo Ibrahim Foundation and the European Climate Foundation. Mary is the Chancellor of the University of Dublin since 1998. Mary’s memoir, Everybody Matters was published in September 2012.