Biographical Note

SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS JOHAN VERBEKE OF BELGIUM

 

AS SPECIAL COORDINATOR FOR LEBANON

 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Johan Verbeke of Belgium as the Special Coordinator for Lebanon.

Mr. Verbeke is a career diplomat.  He joined the Belgian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1981 and has been posted in the Middle East ( Lebanon and Jordan), Central Africa ( Burundi) and South America ( Chile as Chargé d’Affaires).  He also served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Washington, D.C.  In his last posting in Brussels, he served as Chef de Cabinet of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. 

Since September 2004, he has been the Permanent Representative of Belgium to the United Nations in New York.  In this capacity, he has, from 1 January 2007, served on the Security Council, as well as on the Peacebuilding Commission.

During his career, he has carried out a number of assignments for Belgium, including Special Envoy of the Prime Minister to the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) (2002-2005), Personal Representative of the Minister of Foreign Affairs for Counter-Terrorism (2003), Facilitator of the President of the General Assembly for the negotiation of General Assembly-resolutions on Millennium Development Goals-implementation and Economic and Social Council-reform (2005-2006), leader of the Security Council Mission to Kosovo (April 2007), and Chairman of the Security Council Sanctions Committees on Côte d’Ivoire, Iran and Al Qaida/Taliban.

Following law studies in Belgium, Mr. Verbeke obtained a Master of Laws (LL.M.) at the Yale University Law School, in 1978, and a Diplôme d’Etudes Supérieures Européennes (D.E.S.) at the Université de Nancy, in 1975.

Mr. Verbeke was born in Ghent in 1951.  He is married and has three children.

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