Former Mexico president Ernesto Zedillo is to deliver the keynote address at the opening ceremony of the IBA Annual Conference next month.

Zedillo’s speech will kick off the week-long annual International Bar Association (IBA) conference, which this year is being held in Mexico City from 15 – 20 September.

Other top speakers at the conference include human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Rigoberta Menchú, Marc Rotenberg, founder and president of the Center for AI and Digital Policy, and John Sullivan, former US deputy secretary of state and former US ambassador to the Russian Federation.

Zedillo served as Mexico’s president from 1994 – 2000 and subsequently joined The Elders, an independent group of global leaders founded by former South Africa president Nelson Mandela with a mission to promote “peace, justice, human rights and a sustainable planet”.

He was also a member of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, which was set up by the World Health Organisation to assess the response to the Covid-19 pandemic and advise on how to prevent and ameliorate the impact of future pandemics.

Zedillo’s appearance at the conference will underline the IBA’s ongoing focus on promoting the rule of law against the background of heightened geopolitical tensions.

In a recorded message to delegates, he said: “I hope that the impressive gathering of legal professionals and their respective bar associations and societies, due to take place this September in my country, helps to bring to the forefront not just the discussion of why without effective rule of law a society cannot achieve its full potential but also the way in which such effective rule of law must be accomplished.”

Alongside Zedillo, Menchú, Rotenberg and Sullivan, the roster of keynote speakers also includes businessman, television presenter and motivational speaker Nando Parrado – one of the 16 survivors of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 57,  which crashed in the Andes on 13 October 1972 – and actor, director and writer Liev Schreiber. 

Schreiber is a co-founder of BlueCheck Ukraine, which identifies, vets and fast-tracks financial support directly to local NGOs and aid groups on the ground in Ukraine, and will appear alongside Andriy Kostin, Prosecutor General of Ukraine, who also spoke at last year’s conference. 

The findings of the IBA’s recently published Impact Report analysing the economic and societal benefits of upholding the rule of law will also feature prominently at the conference, including in a session hosted by IBA president Almudena Arpón de Mendívil and featuring Baroness Helena Kennedy KC, director of the IBA’s Human Rights Institute, and former UK attorney general Lord Goldsmith KC.

Another major theme running throughout the conference will be the impact of AI on the law with more than 30 sessions dedicated to this topic. 

Last year’s IBA Annual Conference in Paris was attended by more than 5,000 delegates from more than 130 jurisdictions representing all parts of the legal profession, including lawyers in private practice, in-house counsel, human rights advocates, judges, bar leaders, regulators and government representation.

Click here for information about the IBA Annual Conference, which will take place at the Centro Citibanamex in Mexico City.  

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