As one of the closet advisors to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, Jan Egeland was at the center of coordinating the United Nation's response and massive international relief efforts during one of the more challenging periods in its recent history.
He traveled extensively to the front lines of conflict zones and regions ravaged by natural disasters, consistently acting as an aggressive international spokesman for civilians caught in the crossfire of strife, victims of catastrophes, and displaced people. Sometimes controversial, he has made a point of eschewing diplomatic niceties and using direct language to get his points across to national governments and heads of state.
Jan Egeland joins the Council to discuss his new book, A Billion Lives, where he offers a very personal and up-front account about his travels to the most desperate and violent places in the world to negotiate relief efforts and cease fires, as well as to deal with the perpetrators and their victims- World Affairs Council of Northern California
Bio
Jan Egeland
Jan Egeland is former U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator.
Markos Kounalakis
Markos Kounalakis is a print and network broadcast journalist and author who has covered wars and revolutions, both civil and technological. He worked as the NBC Radio and Mutual News Moscow correspondent and covered the fall of the Soviet Union as well as the war in Afghanistan.
He reported the overthrow of communism for Newsweek in East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria and the rise of both democratic institutions in Hungary and of ethnic strife in Yugoslavia. He was based in Rome and Vienna and later ran the magazine's Prague satellite bureau for over a year.