Project Syndicate is an international association of quality newspapers devoted to:

• bringing distinguished voices from across the world to local audiences everywhere;
• strengthening the independence of printed media in transition and developing countries;
• upgrading their journalistic, editorial, and business capacities.

Project Syndicate currently consists of 422 newspapers in 150 countries, with a total circulation of 55,991,478 copies. Its activities fall into two broad categories:

• disseminating the highest quality commentaries and analysis to its member papers;
• fostering institutional links among member papers;

Each year, Project Syndicate delivers hundreds of commentaries by prominent figures to the world's foremost newspapers. With 40 monthly series and one weekly series of commentaries on topics ranging from economics and international affairs to science and philosophy, Project Syndicate's global reach helps readers worldwide understand the issues and choices that are shaping their lives.

All commentaries are written by men and women who deserve to be heard by a global audience - and who know that only Project Syndicate delivers their message to the right address time after time. Project Syndicate's contributors embody the world as it is: an endless variety of professions, national and cultural backgrounds, and political perspectives. Past commentaries have come from:

• Politicians, including UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, former President of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev, President of Poland Aleksander Kwasniewski, and President of Costa Rica and Nobel Laureate Oscar Arias, former Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, former NATO Secretary General George Robertson, US Senator Dianne Feinstein, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard and Prince Hassan of Jordan;
• Novelists, such as Umberto Eco, Nadine Gordimer, Arundhati Roy, and Vladimir Voinovich;
• Academics, including Joseph S. Nye, Pierre Nora, Peter Singer, Nina Khrushcheva, John Gray;
• Global strategists, including Zbigniew Brzezinski, Richard Haass, Sergei Karaganov, and Kenichi Ohmae;
• Scientists, such as Nobel Laureates Sydney Brenner, Paul Berg, and Harold Varmus;
• Economists, including Joseph E. Stiglitz, Jeffrey D. Sachs, Guillermo Calvo, James Wolfensohn, George Soros, Otmar Issing, and Daniel Cohen;
• Activists, such as former EU Commissioner Emma Bonino, Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai, and the Director of Human Rights Watch in China, Xiao Qiang and Egypt's human rights activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim.