Realizing Property Rights

Hernando de Soto, 1941, is currently Co-Chairman of the UN High Level Commission for the Legal Empowerment of the Poor. He is also President of the Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) - headquartered in Lima, Peru - considered by "The Economist" as one of the two most important think tanks in the world. "TIME Magazine" chose him as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century in its special May 1999 issue "Leaders for the New Millennium," and included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004. Hernando de Soto was also listed as one of 15 innovators "who will reinvent your future" according to "Forbes Magazine's" 85th anniversary edition. In January 2000, "Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit," the German development magazine, described him as one of the most important development theoreticians of the last millennium. In October 2005, over 20,000 readers of "Prospect Magazine" and "Foreign Policy" ranked him among the top 13 public intellectuals.

Francis Cheneval studied philosophy at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and political science at Georgetown University (Washington D.C., USA). He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) and has been lecturer and professor in Paris (École pratique des hautes études), Bogotá (Universidad de los Andes), Bruxelles (Université Libre de Bruxelles) and at several Swiss universities. Francis Cheneval is guest professor of political theory at the Université de Nantes and Senior Associate Member of St. Antony's College (University of Oxford). He also holds the position of a lecturer at the European Institute of the University of Geneva. Dr. Cheneval's main research areas are: democratic theory, property rights and human rights, normative theory of multilateralism, cosmopolitanism, history of political thought. He also engages in public dialogue as contributor to the daily press, Radio, and television. During the last two years, he served as Rapporteur to the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor (UNDP, New York).