SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS ENRIQUE TER HORST OF VENEZUELA AS DEPUTY HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
Press Release
SG/A/659*
HR/4352
SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS ENRIQUE TER HORST OF VENEZUELA AS DEPUTY HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS
19980105 Biographical Note Secretary-General Kofi Annan today appointed Enrique ter Horst as Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights. Mr. ter Horst, a national of Venezuela, will serve as Deputy to Mary Robinson who started her work as High Commissioner in September 1997. Mr. ter Horst's post will be at the level of Assistant Secretary-General. He will start in his new post on 1 February.Prior to his new appointment, Mr. ter Horst served as the Secretary- General's Special Representative for Haiti, a post he held from March 1996 to December 1997.
Previously, from 1 April 1994 to 30 September 1995, he had served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General for El Salvador and Chief of the United Nations Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL), and subsequently of the Mission of the United Nations in El Salvador (MINUSAL).
Mr. ter Horst has been an ambassador in the foreign service of Venezuela since 1986. From 1989 to 1992, he served at the United Nations as Assistant Secretary-General in the Office of the Director-General for Development and International Economic Cooperation. In addition, he represented the Secretary-General at the Governing Board of the University for Peace, and was Secretary of the Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) of the United Nations system.
Mr. ter Horst was Assistant President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) from 1987 to 1989. He also served as Deputy Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the United Nations, in Geneva; Venezuelan representative to the Commission on Human Rights; Chairman of the Commission on Multinational Corporations of the International Labour Organization (ILO); and Minister Counsellor to the Permanent Mission of Venezuela to the United Nations.
* Press Releases SG/A/666, SG/A/667 and SG/A/668 should have been numbered SG/A/656, SG/A/657 and SG/A/658, respectively.
** This press release supersedes Press Release BIO/3010, of 5 March 1996.
- 2 - Press Release SG/A/659 BIO/3123 HR/4352 5 January 1998
During the 1970s, Mr. ter Horst served as Executive Assistant to Venezuela's Minister for International Economic Affairs and was his personal representative to the Conference on International Economic Cooperation, in Paris. Prior to that, he was Executive Secretary for the Presidential Commission on the Nationalization of the Venezuelan Iron Industry.
Born in Caracas on 22 November 1948, Mr. ter Horst earned a law degree from the Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1971.
* *** *