Vasu Gounden

Vasu Gounden is the Founder and Executive Director of the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD) which he founded in 1992. It is today a globally recognised conflict management institute and it has been rated by Pennsylvania University's Annual Think Tank Ranking in the top 100 Think Tanks globally for eleven consecutive years.

In 2018 Vasu founded Global Peace to mobilize a global constituency to strengthen multilateralism and to build a better world. Vasu was a Fulbright Scholar at Georgetown University where he graduated with an LLM and is admitted to the High Court of South Africa as an Advocate.

Over the last 33 years Vasu has been involved in preparing conflicting parties across Africa for political negotiations, including rebel leaders and government negotiators in Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Madagascar, and the Central African Republic (CAR). He has provided mediation support to the facilitators of the Burundi Peace Process, which included former Presidents Nelson Mandela and Jacob Zuma, and has served as an advisor on mediation strategy to the late former President Ketumile Masire in the Inter-Congolese Dialogue.

Vasu was also appointed as mediation advisor to the then Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of South Africa, Mr Marius Fransman, on the Madagascar peace process. Vasu is currently providing support to the Government of South Sudan's Mediation Team on the Sudan Peace Process.