Biographical Note

SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS FRANCIS DENG OF SUDAN AS SPECIAL ADVISER

FOR PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE

 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced the appointment of Francis Deng of the Sudan as the new Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide, succeeding Juan Méndez.

Mr. Deng is currently Director of the Sudan Peace Support Project based at the United States Institute of Peace.  He is also a Wilhelm Fellow at the Center for International Studies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a research professor of international politics, law and society at Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.

Before joining the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Deng was a Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the John Kluge Center of the Library of Congress.  Mr. Deng served as Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General on Internally Displaced Persons from 1992 to 2004, and from 2002 to 2003 was also a senior fellow at the United States Institute of Peace.

Mr. Deng served as Human Rights Officer in the United Nations Secretariat from 1967 to 1972 and as the Ambassador of the Sudan to Canada, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden and the United States.  He also served as the Sudan’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs.  After leaving his country’s service, he was appointed the first Rockefeller Brothers Fund Distinguished Fellow.

He was at the Woodrow Wilson International Center first as a guest scholar and then as a senior research associate, after which he joined the Brookings Institution as a senior fellow, where he founded and directed the Africa Project for 12 years.  He was then appointed distinguished professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York before joining Johns Hopkins University.

Among his numerous awards in his country and abroad, Mr. Deng is co-recipient with Roberta Cohen of the 2005 Grawemeyer Award for “Ideas Improving World Order” and the 2007 Merage Foundation American Dream Leadership Award.  In 2000, Mr. Deng also received the Rome Prize for Peace and Humanitarian Action.

Mr. Deng holds a Bachelor of Laws from Khartoum University and a Master of Laws and a Doctor of the Science of Law from Yale University, and has authored and edited over 30 books in the fields of law, conflict resolution, internal displacement, human rights, anthropology, folklore, history and politics and has also written two novels on the theme of the crisis of national identity in the Sudan.  He was born in 1938.

In a continuing effort to strengthen the United Nations’ role in this area, the Secretary-General has asked Mr. Deng to devote full time to this position.  The Secretary-General will continue to look at additional ways to enhance the capacity of the Office of the Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide.

On a related note, the Secretary-General is also exploring ways to strengthen United Nations efforts on the responsibility to protect, which may include the appointment of a separate adviser.

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For information media • not an official record