Bharrat Jagdeo

At 60 years old, Bharrat Jagdeo physical status not available right now. We will update Bharrat Jagdeo's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Jagdeo was born in Unity Village in Demerara-Mahaica, in then British Guiana in 1964 to Hindu Indian parents. In 1912, his grandfather, Ram Jiyawan had immigrated under the Indian indenture system to British Guiana from the village of Pure Thakurain in the Amethi district of the Awadh region of the United Provinces in British India (present-day state of Uttar Pradesh in India). Jagdeo joined the youth wing of the People's Progressive Party (PPP), the Progressive Youth Organisation, when he was 13, and became a member of the PPP itself at age 16. He subsequently rose to local leadership positions in the party.

He attended Bygeval Multilateral High School before migrating to Russia in 1984 for higher studies. After obtaining a master's degree in economics from Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University in Moscow in 1990, Jagdeo returned to Guyana and worked as an economist in the State Planning Secretariat until the PPP-Civic election victory in the October 1992 election. After this he became Special Advisor to the Minister of Finance.

Jagdeo was appointed as Junior Minister of Finance in October 1993, and a few weeks later, at the PPP's 24th Congress, he was elected to the party's Central Committee. He later became a member of the executive committee of the PPP. In the Cabinet, he was promoted to Senior Minister of Finance in May 1995. In December 1997, he was appointed as the Second Vice President.

International profile and post-presidency career

President Jagdeo was elected as chairman of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in September 2005. He occupied this position until September 2006.

Time magazine named Jagdeo as one of their "Heroes of the Environment" in 2008, and he was awarded the United Nations "Champion of the Earth" award in 2010.

In early 2010, the Secretary General of the United Nations asked Jagdeo to serve on the Secretary General's High Level Advisory Group on Climate Financing.

Jagdeo is a Patron of the Delhi-based World Sustainable Development Forum.

In 2011, Heads of State and other leaders from the world's rainforest countries asked him to be "Roving Ambassador for the Three Basins" (Amazon, Congo Basin, South East Asia).

In March 2012, the world's largest and oldest environmental organisation, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), announced that President Jagdeo would become the IUCN High Level Envoy for Sustainable Development in Forest Countries and an IUCN Patron of Nature.

Jagdeo is also the President of the Assembly of the Korea-based Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI), having been a Founding Board Member of GGGI since 2010. GGGI is the world's newest international organization, and has 20 Member States.

In June 2013, Commonwealth Secretary-General Kamalesh Sharma announced that former President Jagdeo would lead a high-level team of experts to identify solutions for unlocking resources to enable small, poor and climate-vulnerable Commonwealth countries to combat climate change. The former president was joined by eight others to create a set of recommendations for the international community to help identify practical solutions for those countries most vulnerable to climate change. Jagdeo presented the report to the 53 Heads of Government and other leaders of the Commonwealth, representing about a fifth of the world's population at the 2014 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Jagdeo travelled from the 2015 CHOGM to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change summit in Warsaw where he spoke of the outcomes of CHOGM and the need for continued leadership from Prime Ministers and Presidents. In a major speech in Warsaw, he stated: "In the next 24 months much progress needs to be made if we are going to have a climate agreement. We can still stop the absolute worst extremes of climate change, and start the massive shift towards global low carbon development... The world tried to do this in 2009 at Copenhagen, and failed. As a consequence, more people will die, more livelihoods will be destroyed, more economies will suffer and the cost of action has gone up steadily...If we fail again in 2015, the damage and the costs will become truly unmanageable....Future generations will ask: how could we be so selfish not once, but twice?"

In March 2013, the ACP Council of Ministers inaugurated a 14-member Eminent Persons Group (EPG) whose mission will be to provide guidance and concrete recommendations for the future of the ACP Group. The 14 members of the group who met in Brussels designated the former Nigerian President, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo, as their chairperson, with Jagdeo designated as one of two Vice Chairs.

Jagdeo has been a guest lecturer at Columbia University (New York City, USA), York University (Toronto, Canada), Trent University (Peterborough, Canada), the University of Toronto, United Nations University (Tokyo, Japan), and the University of the West Indies. He has also taken part in Trent University's Carbon Conversation, focusing on the need to de-carbonize the global economy.

Following the PPP's defeat in the May 2015 general election, Jagdeo was included in the list of the PPP's 32 MPs. He was sworn in as Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly on 17 August 2015.

In March 2020, the PPP won the 2020 Guyanese general election, but an attempt was made by the incumbent APNU+AFC government to stay in power illegally. Jagdeo was to the fore of domestic and international efforts to protect the democratic process, and see a peaceful transition of power. The support of the US Government (who placed sanctions on several members of the incumbent Government), and others, resulted in the swearing in of Irfaan Ali as president.

After the PPP regained the presidency, President Ali swore in Jagdeo as the first Vice President on 3 August 2020. Jagdeo also shortly held the position of Minister of Finance until Ashni Singh was appointed the minister.

Source