Mary Robinson

Robinson returned to live in Ireland at the end of 2010 and has set up The Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice which aims to be 'a centre for thought leadership education and advocacy on the struggle to secure global justice for those many victims of climate change who are usually forgotten - the poor the disempowered and the marginalised across the world. Media reports suggested that Mary Robinson had been head-hunted for the post by Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan to assume an advocacy as opposed to administrative role in other words to become a public campaigner outlining principles rather than the previous implementational and consensus-building model. Robinson sits on the Board of the Mo Ibrahim Foundation an organisation which supports good governance and great leadership in Africa and is a member of the Foundation’s Ibrahim Prize Committee.

She resigned the presidency two months ahead of the end of her term of office to take up her post in the United Nations. She is widely regarded as a transformative figure for Ireland and for the Irish presidency revitalising and liberalising a previously conservative low-profile political office. Robinson served as Oxfam's honorary president from 2002 until Mary Robinson stepped down in 2012 and is honorary president of the European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation EIUC since 2005.