Keynote Speaker

NWMUN 2011 Keynote Speaker: Andrew Mack, Director of the Human Security Report Project

"The best single explanation for our improved security is that the international community – spearheaded

by the United Nations – really has had an impact. Most people thought the UN was hopeless.

The UN is hopeless in all sorts of ways, but it also makes a huge difference."

- Andrew Mack, Director of the Human Security Report Project

Andrew Mack is the Director of the Human Security Report Project (HSRP) at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and also a faculty member in SFU's School of International Studies. Mack began his work in international academia as a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian National University's Strategic and Defense Studies Centre, 

Secretary-General Kofi Annan as Director of the Strategic Planning Unit in the Office of the Secretary-General, a position he held until 2001. He has also taught or researched at academic institutions in the UK, US, China, Japan, Australia, and Denmark. Prior to entering the international affairs field, he had an incredibly diverse early career, including the 

Royal Air Force, diamond prospecting in Sierra Leone, producer for the BBC World News, and deputy base commander and meteorologist for two and a half years in Antarctica. He has also written or edited 11 books. It is no wonder, then, that his career has been described as an "improbable movie outline."

In 2005, the Human Security Report founded by Andrew Mack was first published. The report challenged conventional wisdom, documenting how conflicts had actually decreased worldwide since the end of the Cold War. As part of the Human Security Centre at the University of British Columbia, the report was published through 2007; in that year, the HSRP moved to Simon Fraser University.  The report is considered as one of the most "most comprehensive and authoritative ongoing survey of global trends in warfare, genocide and human rights abuses" in the world. The most recent report, for 2009-2010, is entitled "The Causes of Peace and The Shrinking Costs of War," and addresses both the declining number of conflicts in the world and the evolution of violence-related casualties from direct, conflict-related fatalities to deaths with indirect causes such as war-related malnutrition.

For more information on Andrew Mack, including his interviews, biography, and writings, please see the links below.