Álvaro Uribe

Who is Álvaro Uribe?

Álvaro Uribe Vélez is a Colombian politician who served as the 31st President of Colombia from 2002 to 2010. In 2012 Uribe and a group of political allies founded the Centro Democratico or Democratic Center movement to contest the 2014 national elections.

In August 2010 he was appointed Vice-chairman of the UN panel investigating the Gaza flotilla raid. Uribe started his political career in his home department of Antioquia. He has held office in the Empresas Públicas de Medellín and in the Ministry of Labor and in the Civil Aeronautic. Later he held office as the mayor of Medellín in 1982, then he was Senator between 1986 and 1994 and finally Governor of Antioquia between 1995 and 1997 before he was elected President of Colombia in 2002. Before his current role in politics Uribe was a lawyer. He studied law at the University of Antioquia and afterwards attended Harvard Extension School, where he received a Certificate of Special Studies in Administration and Management in 1993. He was awarded the Simón Bolívar Scholarship of the British Chevening Scholarships programme and was appointed Senior Associate Member at St Antony's College, Oxford after completing his term in office as the governor of Antioquia in 1998.