Juan Antonio Blanco

Juan Antonio Blanco "majored in history and pedagogy at the University of Havana. In 1985, he received his PhD in historical sciences. He has taught at the University of Havana, Instituto Superior de Relations Internationale, and Instituto Superior Pedagogic. He has published in journals, such as Pensamiento Crítico, Cuadernos de Nuestra América, and Contracorriente (Cuba), Links (Australia), Human Rights Tribune (Canada), La Factoría (Spain), and Critika (Sweden). He founded and directed the magazine Acuario (Cuba) and was member of the editorial boards of Links, Human Rights Tribune, and the Mexican Institute of Technology's journal. He is the author of Tercer Milenio (1994) and has specialized in matters related to sustainable development and bio-ethics.

"Between 1974 and 1992, he occupied a number of official positions in Cuba. Among them were: official of the MINREX's UN Department (1972-1975); head of MINREX's Department of Non-Aligned Countries (1976-1979); political counsel of Cuba's UN Mission (1980-1982); director of the UN Office of the President of Non-Aligned Countries in New York (1979-1982); economic counsel at the Cuban Embassy in Bolivia (1983-1984); and official for the US and policy-planning sections in the Americas Department of the Cuban Communist Party's Central Committee (1985-1992).

"In 1993, he founded the Felix Varela Center and was its director until 1997. He participated in the Salzburg Seminar's sessions dedicated to the construction of global citizenship (1995). He has participated in numerous international events in Cuba and other countries such as: congresses of the Latin American Association of Sociology and the American Association of Caribbean Studies and seminars on the eradication of poverty organized in Chile by Norway's CROPP and sponsored by the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and the European Union. Representing a number of NGOs, he has attended UN events such as the Global Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993) and the Summit of Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995).

"Since 1997, he has been the director for international cooperation of Human Rights Internet (HRI), an international NGO based in Ottawa, founded twenty-five years ago and with UN consultant status. He serves mainly as the facilitator of joint actions between human rights and development NGOs within the United Nations. He coordinated the international forum of human rights NGOs Vienna+5, organized in Ottawa in 1998 by HRI and the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights and sponsored by the Canadian and Norwegian governments." 

In 2003 he was a board member of the Memory, Truth and Justice: Comparative Perspectives on National Reconciliation.