Biographical Note

Gert Rosenthal of Guatemala Chair of Fifth Committee

Gert Rosenthal of Guatemala was elected Chair of the Fifth Committee (Administrative and Budgetary) on 11 June 2010.  (See Press Release GA/10947)

Mr. Rosenthal was appointed his country’s Permanent Representative on 7 May 2008.  He was his country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2006 to 2007, and served as an international consultant from 2004 to 2005 for the Friederich Ebert Foundation, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) and the Central American Bank of Economic Integration.  During that time, he was also an international consultant for the Guatemalan Congress, the Executive Branch of the Guatemalan Government and the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

He served an earlier appointment as Permanent Representative, from 1999 to 2004, during which he acted as Facilitator for the Millennium Summit, President of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Executive Board, President of the General Assembly’s Fifth Committee, President of the Economic and Social Council, and Member of the Bureau of the Preparatory Committee for the International Conference on Financing for Development, among other elected posts.

Prior to that, in 1998, he was a member of the Oversight Commission of the Guatemalan Peace Accords.

Mr. Rosenthal has had a long involvement with the United Nations.  He was Executive Secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), Chile, from 1988 through 1997.  Two years prior, he was Deputy Executive Secretary (1985-1987), before which he was Director of the Commission’s Mexico office for more than a decade (1974 to 1985).

Before joining the Commission, Mr. Rosenthal was actively involved in the process of Central American economic integration.  Between 1972 and 1973, he was Director of a United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) project to promote the Central American Common Market.

In 1971, Mr. Rosenthal was a Fellow at the Adlai Stevenson Institute for International Affairs in Chicago.  In the preceding years, he was the Secretary-General of his country’s National Council for Economic Planning from 1969 through 1970.  From 1964 to 1968, he held various positions in the national public administration, and had served in the regional bodies derived from the General Treaty for Economic Integration in Central America.  Between 1960 and 1964, he was an economist with the Secretariat of Economic Planning in Guatemala.

He held teaching posts at the Rafael Landivar University in Guatemala from 1969 through 1974, and was an economics graduate of the University of California at Berkeley.  He is a holder of the Licenciado en Ciencias Económicas from the Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala (1959), and an honorary doctorate in social sciences from Universidad del Valle, Guatemala (1996).

Mr. Rosenthal was a contributor to the Oxford University Press’ United Nations Handbook, as well as numerous articles on economic issues.

Born on 11 September 1935, Mr. Rosenthal is married and has four daughters.

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*     This supersedes Press Release BIO/3981 of 7 May 2008.

For information media • not an official record