Keynote address with Ambassador Robert Fowler: "Sleeping with Al Qaeda."
"Assaulting Cultural Heritage: ISIS's Fight to Destroy Diversity in Iraq and Syria" is the theme of MIGS’s academic conference designed to educate the public on the significance of assaults on pluralism. The conference also promotes greater community engagement and raises awareness of the threat to cultural pluralism posed by violent extremist movements such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda
About Ambassador Robert Fowler
In the course of more than 38 years of public service, Bob Fowler spent a dozen years in the Department of External Affairs, serving in Paris, at the UN, and at Headquarters in Ottawa, before being transferred to the Privy Council Office to become the Foreign Policy Advisor to Prime Ministers Trudeau, then Turner and then Mulroney (1980 - 86).
From 1986 to 1989, he was Assistant Deputy Minister (Policy) at the Department of National Defence, and then served as Deputy Minister of National Defence from 1989 to 1995. As Deputy Minister, he was responsible for 35,000 civilian employees, the administrative, materiel and support needs of 90,000 members of the Canadian Forces, a budget of $13 billion, and for the elaboration of defence policy. Three White Papers on Canadian Defence Policy were produced during those years, reflecting the radically changing geo-strategic environment.
In January of 1995 he was named Ambassador to the United Nations (1995 - 2000), where he represented Canada on the Security Council in 1999 and 2000, and was Canada’s longest serving UN Ambassador. As Chair of the Security Council’s Angolan Sanctions Committee, he issued two ground-breaking reports which, by putting an end to the impunity of sanctions busters and severely limiting the UNITA rebels' access to world diamond markets and the arms bazaar, led to the end of the civil war that had ravaged Angola for 27 years.
From 2000 to 2006, Mr. Fowler was Canadian Ambassador to Italy, Albania, San Marino, the three Rome-based UN Food Agencies (FAO, WFP, and IFAD), and High Commissioner to Malta. Concurrently, he was appointed Sherpa for the Kananaskis G8 Summit in 2002 (chairing the creation of the Africa Action Plan, which laid a new foundation for the G8's relationship with Africa), and in 2005 he led Prime Minister Martin’s Special Advisory Team on Sudan, which included Senators Roméo Dallaire and Mobina Jaffer.
From 2001 to 2006, he was the Personal Representative for Africa of Prime Ministers Chrétien, Martin and, (very briefly), Harper.
Mr. Fowler retired from the federal public service in the fall of 2006 and from the spring of 2007 to June 2015 was a Senior Fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.
In July 2008, the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, appointed Mr. Fowler to be his Special Envoy to Niger, with the rank of Under-Secretary-General. While engaged in his UN mission, Mr. Fowler and his colleague, Louis Guay, were captured by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) on 14 December 2008, and held hostage deep in the Sahara Desert for nearly five months. In November 2011 HarperCollins (Canada) published his account of that experience entitled, “A Season in Hell: My 130 days in the Sahara with Al Qaeda”, which was later published by Québec Amérique as “Ma Saison en Enfer.”
Mr. Fowler was awarded honorary doctorates from the University of Ottawa in 2010 and from Queen’s in 2011. In November 2011, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.
Bob and Mary Fowler live in Ottawa and have four daughters and seven grandchildren.
