Biographical Note

Peter Maurer of Switzerland Chair of Fifth Committee

Peter Maurer, Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations, was elected Chair of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) on 10 June.  (See Press Release GA/10831.)

He has been his country’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations since September 2004, prior to which he was Head of the Political Affairs Division IV (Human Security) in the Political Affairs Directorate of the Government of Switzerland, having been appointed by the Federal Council in 2000.  Until that appointment he was Deputy Permanent Observer at the Observer Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations in New York.

Mr. Maurer joined the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs in 1987, having trained first in Bern and then in Pretoria.  From 1989 to 1991, he was a Diplomatic Adviser in the Political Secretariat.  He then served as Private Secretary to the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs from 1991 to 1996.

He was educated at the University of Bern, earning a doctorate in humanities in 1986.

Born in Thun, Switzerland, in 1956, and raised in Zollikofen (Canton of Bern), he is married and has two children.

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*     This supersedes Press Release BIO/3605 of 16 September 2004.

For information media • not an official record