Eduardo Mendoza

Eduardo Mendoza

"A 1941 agricultural engineering graduate of Argentina's Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Mr. Mendoza was the youngest cabinet minister in Venezuelan history. As Secretary of Agriculture, he headed the Venezuelan Institute for Immigration and enthusiastically embraced the creation of the International Refugee Organization in 1946 (this body was later replaced by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees). Mendoza succeeded, despite fierce opposition within the cabinet, in ensuring that Venezuela would aid European refugees and displaced persons who could not or would not return home after World War II; he assumed responsibility for the legal protection and resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees inside Venezuela. A lifelong scientific researcher, he was elected to the Andean Parliament in 2000, serving until 2001. He is the great-grandson of Venezuela’s first President, Cristóbal Mendoza, and the great-grand-nephew of Venezuela's liberator, Simón Bolívar." 

A director of Human Rights Foundation.