Speaker biography

Mikhail Saakashvili was elected president of Georgia in January 2004, following what has become known as the Rose Revolution. From 2002 to 2004 he was president of the Sakrebulo (City Council) of Tbilisi, capital of Georgia. On October 12, 2000, he was appointed minister of justice of Georgia and in 2001 he resigned from this post. Beginning on January 24, 2000, he was vice president of the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly. During the year he was head of the Georgian delegation in the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly.  In 1995 he was elected as a head of the Constitutional, Legal Issues and Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliament of Georgia. In 1997 the Georgian mass media and several nongovernmental organizations recognized Mikheil Saakashvili as the Man of the Year.  In 1995–96 he earned a doctorate in the George Washington University National Center of Law. He was also awarded with a diploma in comparative law of human rights from the Strasbourg Human Rights International Institute. He has worked at the Norwegian Institute of Human Rights, Human Rights Protection State Committee of Georgia, and at one of the biggest advocate firms in New York.  Mr. Saakashvili graduated from the Kiev University Institute of International Relations, Faculty of International Law, with honors. He was awarded a magistrate degree in law at Columbia University, Faculty of Law, where he studied on the USA Congress Scholarship.

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