Noemí Sanín

Marta Noemí del Espíritu Santo Sanín Posada (born 6 June 1949) is a Colombian-born politician and diplomat. She was the Conservative party candidate in the 2010 Colombian presidential election.

A lawyer from Pontifical Xavierian University and 2001 Fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, she has served as Ambassador of Colombia to the United Kingdom, Ambassador of Colombia to Spain, Ambassador of Colombia to Venezuela, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia, and Minister of Communications of Colombia.

Before running in 2010 as a Conservative, Sanín ran as an independent candidate during the 1998 presidential election, and again during the 2002 presidential election, backed both times by the Yes Colombia movement.

Education Sanín studied law at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá. She later studied post graduate studies in Commercial law and finance and worked for several entities in the financial sector in both state and private sectors.

Political career In 1976 Sanín was appointed as Vice President of Operations and Credit in the Corporación de Ahorro y Vivienda, (Colmena) (Savings and Housing Corporation) until 1979. She was later appointed President of this institution with only 30 years of age and became the first woman in Latin America to ever manage a financial corporation. Due to this decision she has been accused by the Colombian Truth Commission of censoring information as a way to keep in the dark the excesses undertaken by the military, which have been well known for decades and are now legally surfacing.

Peace negotiator in Casa Verde President Betancur appointed Sanín as representative of the government in the first commission that visited Casa Verde, the then headquarters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrilla, to negotiate a peaceful solution to the Colombian armed conflict. During her term as minister she modernized the administrative structure of the ministry. She also won a seat for Colombia in the Security Council of the United Nations and the presidency of the country in the G-77. She also gained the presidency for the nation in the Non-Aligned Movement and signed the border dispute resolution Sanín-Robertson treaty which resolved borders with Jamaica. In addition she won the seat as Secretary General of Organization of American States for Colombia with the appointment of César Gaviria.

Ambassador of Colombia to the United Kingdom 1994 In 1994 Sanín was appointed consul of Colombia to the United Kingdom. Her campaign later supported the Great Alliance for Change led by Andrés Pastrana.

Presidential candidate 2002 In 2002, she ran again for president, this time as a member of her own movement, the Yes Colombia party. to Jaime Sanín Echeverri and Noemí Posada Saldarriaga, their third child out of fifteen children. Her father was a hardline conservative writer, journalist and a vice-president of the Colombian Language Academy; her mother a teacher and housewife. She married young at the age of 19 to Diego Durán Cabal, and together they had one daughter, María Jimena. She divorced in 1975 and remarried to Mario Alberto Rubio Caicedo, a lawyer from Bogotá, but the marriage ended in 1999 leaving no children.