Prof. Dr. Peter Eigen
Prof. Dr. Peter Eigen is co-founder and shareholder of HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform gGmbH.
Eigen has worked in economic development and governance for several decades and has led initiatives for better global governance and the fight against corruption.
A lawyer by training, Eigen has worked as a World Bank manager of programs in Africa and Latin America; from 1983 to 1988 he was Programs Division Chief for Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay. At that time Latin America suffered its greatest debt crisis and the responsibility of Eigen and his team included appropriate policy advice, project and structural adjustment financing — in particular in Argentina, Chile and Peru. Thereafter, he was the Director of the Regional Mission for Eastern Africa of the World Bank. Under Ford Foundation sponsorship, he provided legal and technical assistance to the governments of Botswana and Namibia to strengthen the legal framework for mining investments.
In 1993 Eigen founded Transparency International (TI), a non-governmental organization promoting transparency and accountability in international development. From 1993 to 2005 he was Chair of TI and is now Chair of its Advisory Council. During this period he founded the Partnership for Transparency Fund and is still on its board. From 2005–11, Eigen was the founding chairman of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI). In August 2014 he co-founded the “HUMBOLDT-VIADRINA Governance Platform” in Berlin and he is the Chair of its Governance Projects.
Eigen has taught law and political science at the universities of Frankfurt/M, Harvard, SAIS/ Johns Hopkins, University of Washington and Bruges College of Europe. From 2002 – 2014 he was teaching Political Science at the Freie Universität, Berlin. In 2000, he was awarded the ‘Honorary Doctor’ degree at the Open University, UK, in 2004, the Readers Digest Award “European of the Year 2004” and in 2007 the Gustav Heinemann Award. Germany awarded Peter Eigen its Grand Cross of Merit in recognition of his efforts to combat corruption at the global level in January 2013.
Since 2007 Eigen is a member of Kofi Annan’s Africa Progress Panel (APP). 2009–2012 he was the vice-chairman of the Management Board of the African Legal Support Facility, African Development Bank. From 2007–2012 he served on the Board of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) in Washington.
Until 2012 Eigen was the founding chairman of the International Civil Society Center, Berlin. Since 2008 he is a member of the boards of the NGOs Kabissa and of the German Doctors e.V. He serves on Advisory Boards: since 2010 of the Columbia Center for Sustainable Investment (New York), and since 2013 of the Natural Resources Institute (formerly Natural Resources Charter, Oxford).
