Biographical Note

SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS STAFFAN DE MISTURA OF SWEDEN

AS SPECIAL REPRESENTATIVE FOR IRAQ

 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Staffan de Mistura of Sweden as his Special Representative for Iraq.  Mr. de Mistura, currently serves as Director of the United Nations Staff College in Turin, Italy, and will replace Ashraf Jehangir Qazi.

Mr. de Mistura has served as Deputy Special Representative for Iraq from January 2005 to April 2006, and as Personal Representative of the Secretary-General for Southern Lebanon from 2001-2004.  Prior to his appointment for Southern Lebanon, Mr. de Mistura was Director of the United Nations Information Centre in Rome.

For more than three decades, Mr. de Mistura has served the United Nations in conflict-affected areas including Somalia, the Middle East, the Balkans and Nepal.  He was the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq from March through August 1997.  Prior to that, he held the posts of Director of the Division of Public Affairs of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and UNICEF Representative in Somalia.

Mr. de Mistura has also served the United Nations in many other capacities, including as Director of Fund-Raising and External Relations of the United Nations Office of the Coordinator for Afghanistan from 1988 to 1991, Director of the World Food Programme operations in the Sudan in 1987 and as the Food and Agricultural Organization’s Deputy Chef de Cabinet, from 1976 to 1985.  In addition, he was given special humanitarian assignments to Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Sudan, Ethiopia, Viet Nam and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.

In 1999, Mr. de Mistura became a member of the Security Council Panel on Humanitarian Issues in Iraq, and from April to June of the same year, he was the Special Adviser to the High Commissioner for Refugees on the Kosovo crisis before he was appointed as Regional Administrator for theMitrovica Region-Kosovo.  In June 2000, he was Special Rapporteur during the Fribourg Forum on Regional Cooperation and Coordination in Crisis Management for Europe and the Newly Independent States.

Mr. de Mistura, who speaks Swedish, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Arabic (colloquial), is married and has two daughters.

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*     This supersedes Press Release SG/A/904-BIO/3633 of 13 January 2005.

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