NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF CAMEROON PRESENTS CREDENTIALS
Biographical Note BIO/3029
12 August 1996
NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF CAMEROON PRESENTS CREDENTIALS
Paul Bamela Engo, the new Permanent Representative of Cameroon to the United Nations, presented his credentials today to Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
Mr. Engo had previously occupied that post from 1984 to 1990. A lawyer, a jurist and a diplomat for over 30 years, he was also Minister Plenipotentiary, Exceptional Class, and a Senior Counsel for Cameroon at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in the case between his country and Nigeria.
The new Permanent Representative's experience in the United Nations began in 1965, when he was a member of his country's delegation to the General Assembly's Sixth Committee (Legal). He served in that capacity many times up to 1990. In 1969 he was elected Vice-Chairman of the Committee, and in the following year he was elected Chairman.
In addition to having served as Cameroon's Permanent Representative for six years, Mr. Engo was also deputy head of the Cameroonian delegation to several Assembly sessions, and was a Vice-President of the forty-second session (1987). In addition, he served as Vice-Chairman of the Commission on Human Rights and of the Disarmament Commission, and as a member of the Bureau of the Executive Board of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) at various times between 1985 and 1989.
In 1984, Mr. Engo was the Chairman of the African Group that negotiated the General Assembly Declaration on the Critical Economic Situation in Africa. In 1985, he served as Rapporteur-General and Head of the Cameroonian delegation to the Lome Ministerial Conference of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), which produced the Declaration on Security, Disarmament and Development.
Between 1971 and 1984, Mr. Engo served in various capacities in relation to the Law of the Sea. In 1971, he served as the Chairman of the First Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of the Sea-Bed and Ocean Floor and, from 1972 to 1973 as Chairman, First Committee of the United Nations Preparatory Committee for the Plenipotentiary Conference on the Law of the Sea. In 1973, he was appointed the Cameroonian Head of State's Special Representative to the Third United Nations Plenipotentiary Conference on the Law of the Sea. From that year until 1982, he chaired the Conference's First Committee, which negotiated the ocean mining section of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. He chaired Cameroon's Presidential Commission on the Law of the Sea in 1984.
Mr. Engo began his professional career in 1959, when he served as Her Majesty's Crown Counsel in the Legal Department of Lagos (Nigeria) and Southern Cameroons until 1961. He then served as a magistrate, from 1961 to 1963; Senior Member of Cameroon's Federal Judicial Commission, from 1961 to 1964; and argued his nation's case against the United Kingdom at the ICJ in 1963. He was later appointed Minister Counsellor in the Cameroonian embassies to Bonn in 1964; Washington, D.C., from 1965 to 1968; and at the mission to the United Nations, in 1968. Mr. Engo was promoted to Minister Plenipotentiary in 1969 and named Technical Adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1973.
The new Permanent Representative has lectured at various universities and academic institutions on the development of African political ideas, pan-Africanism, the law of the sea and English common law. He is credited with publications on aspects of law reform in Cameroon and on Africa's contributions to the development of international law.
In 1967, Mr. Engo was awarded the Cameroonian Knighthood (Chevalier de l'Ordre de la Valeur Camerounaise) and in 1980 he became Commandeur de l'Ordre de la Valeur. He has also won athletic medals in track and field events in west Africa and Europe and represented Nigeria in the finals of the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and at the 1958 British Commonwealth Games.
Mr. Engo is married, has seven children and six grandchildren.
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