Ben Rowswell

Biography:

BEN ROWSWELL is the Founder and Convenor of The Circle for Democratic Solidarity and a Canadian pioneer in the field of global democracy. His latest project, the Circle is a network of concerned Canadians seeking to uphold democracy and democratic values. The Circle originates from a partnership between the Canadian International Council (CIC) and Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) Canada.

Rowswell's journey towards becoming a global democracy advocate began with his 25-year career as a professional diplomat. This included postings to Canada's embassies in Egypt and the United States, as well as in Canada's Permanent Mission to the United Nations.

From 2003 to 2005 Rowswell was Canada's first diplomatic envoy in Baghdad (Iraq) after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and from 2008 to 2010 he was deputy ambassador to Afghanistan and head of the NATO regional reconstruction team in Kandahar. His last diplomatic post was from 2014 to 2017, when he served as Canada's ambassador to Venezuela.

At headquarters in Ottawa, Rowswell founded the Department of Democracy, today the Department of Democracy, Integration and Religious Freedom. Among the Prime Ministers Jean Chrétien and Stephen Harper, he has twice worked as an adviser to the Federal Cabinet of International Affairs in the Secret Council Office.

As a long-standing supporter of the establishment of a Canada-funded Institute for Global Democracy, Rowswell left the government in 2018 to support the mobilization of Canadian civil society to support democracy abroad.

That year, he was appointed president of the Canadian International Council, Canada's oldest foreign policy think tank. In this role, he led the largest deliberative democracy exercise in Canadian history, the project "Foreign Policy by Canadians" in 2021.

In 2011, Rowswell was awarded the first Palmer Prize for Diplomats by the Community of Democracies, whose later winners were awarded the Uruguayan OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro and Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Sources: https://www.democraticsolidarity.net/about| https://www.aia-nrw.org/de/fellow/ben-rowswell

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