In 1996, Dr. Ramos-Horta, along with his countryman Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee honored the laureates for their "sustained efforts to hinder the oppression of a small people," in the hope that "this will spur efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict of East Timor based on the people's right to self-determination."

Dr. Ramos-Horta has spent more than a quarter of a century as a human rights diplomat, in exile from his homeland, denouncing the illegal invasion and annexation of East Timor by Indonesia and defending the right of the East Timorese people to self-determination. He has presented the case of East Timor, and pleaded for the respect of human rights, before the UN Security Council, the UN Commission on Human Rights, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the European Parliament. Dr. Ramos-Horta has also met with diplomats and leaders around the world, including President Clinton of the U.S., President Chirac of France, President Wahid of Indonesia, Prime Minister Tony Blair of the U.K., and many others, on behalf of East Timor and human rights.

In 1999, Dr. Ramos-Horta's tireless efforts bore fruit with the historic referendum in East Timor, in which the East Timorese overwhelmingly expressed their desire for independence. Terrible violence ensued the referendum, but the people had spoken and the world heard. In December 1999, for the first time in 24 years, Dr. Ramos-Horta returned to his homeland to help with the rebuilding of the country and its transition to independence under the auspices of the United Nations Transitional Administration.

José Ramos-Horta was born on December 26, 1949, in Dili, East Timor, and he was educated in a Catholic mission in the village of Soibada. He trained as a journalist and worked in that profession in East Timor, also acting as a radio and TV correspondent from 1969 to 1974.

Dr. Ramos-Horta was actively involved in the development of political awareness in East Timor which caused him to be exiled for two years in 1970-1971 in Mozambique. A moderating influence in the emerging Timorese nationalism, he was mandated in 1974-75 by the pro-independence parties to represent East Timor abroad. He left the island three days before the Indonesian troops invaded.

In December 1975, he arrived in New York to address the UN Security Council and urge them to take action in the face of the Indonesian military onslaught which resulted in over 200,000 East Timorese deaths (estimated at one-third of the East Timorese population) between 1976 and 1981. (Four of Dr. Ramos-Horta's eleven brothers and sisters were killed by the Indonesian military.) José Ramos-Horta was the Permanent Representative of the FRETILIN (Revolutionary Front for an Independent East Timor) to the UN for the ensuing ten years, and he tells of his experience as a diplomat in his book "Funu: The Saga of East Timor."

In February 1996, he was awarded the first UNPO prize, given by the Unrepresented Nationals and Peoples Organization for his "unswerving commitment to the rights of and freedoms of threatened peoples." In 1998, he was awarded the Gran Cross of the Order of Freedom, the highest honor bestowed by the Portuguese government. Other awards bestowed upon him include the Gold Medal of the President of Italy, the First Hague Peace Appeal Award, the International Peace Activist Award from the Gleitsman Foundation, and the Professor Thorof Rafto Human Rights Award.

His dedication to the defense of human rights led him to set up in 1989 the Diplomacy Training Programme (DTP) in the Law Faculty of the University of New South Wales to train indigenous peoples, minorities and human rights activists from the Asia Pacific region in the UN Human Rights System.

Dr. Ramos-Horta studied Public International Law at the Hague Academy of International Law and at Antioch University where he completed an M.A. in Peace Studies. He was trained in Human Rights Law at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France, attended post-graduate courses in American Foreign Policy at Columbia University, New York, and is a Senior Associate Member of St. Anthony's College, Oxford, England. He has also been awarded honorary doctorates by seven universities in the U.S. and abroad.