New Permanent Representative of Gabon Presents Credentials

(Based on information provided by the Protocol and Liaison Service)

The new Permanent Representative of Gabon to the United Nations, Michel Xavier Biang, presented his credentials to UN Secretary-General António Guterres today.

Before his latest appointment, Mr. Biang was his country’s Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from February 2015, accredited concurrently to Rwanda, Burundi and Uganda.

His previous Government assignments included Deputy Permanent Secretary to the National Climate Council in charge of international climate-change negotiations, from 2014 to 2015; Director of Legal Affairs at the National Civil Aviation Agency from 2012 to 2014; and Diplomatic and Legal Adviser at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2010 to 2012.

Between 2004 and 2005, Mr. Biang was the legal adviser to the President of the fifty-ninth session of the United Nations General Assembly.  From 2002 to 2012 he was an expert member of the national commission dealing with the territorial dispute between Gabon and Equatorial Guinea over the island of Mbanié.

Mr. Biang graduated from Gabon’s École nationale d’administration in 1999 with an advanced professional degree in diplomacy, having previously earned a master’s degree in international law at Laval University in Canada (1996), a master’s in public law from Omar Bongo University in Gabon (1995) and a bachelor’s in public law from the Bilingual University of Yaoundé in Cameroon (1992).