Rytis Paulauskas (Lithuania) Chair of First Committee

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

The First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) elected Rytis Paulauskas (Lithuania) Chair on 1 June.  (See Press Release GA/12504.)

Prior to his appointment in 2021 as Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mr. Paulauskas was Director of the Communications and Cultural Diplomacy Department of his country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a position to which he was appointed in August 2016.

He was Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva between August 2012 and July 2016; Director of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Chairmanship Department and Head of the OSCE Chairmanship Task Force from 2008 to 2012; and Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, OSCE, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other international organizations in Vienna from November 2003 to August 2008.

At Lithuania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he was Director of the Security Policy Department from February to October 2003; Director of the Multilateral Relations Department from 2001 to February 2003; and Head of the Security Policy Division from 1999 to 2000.

In New York, he was Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1996 to 1999 — during which time he was elected as Rapporteur of the Sixth Committee (Legal) — and Counsellor from 1995 to 1996.  He was Lithuania’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, from 1993 to 1994, and Attaché and then Acting Head of the International Organizations Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1991 to 1993.

Mr. Paulauskas holds a Master of Arts degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the United States and a Master of Law degree from Vilnius University in Lithuania.

Born in Vilnius on 24 May 1969, he is married, has one son and lists reading, theatre, cinema and the restoration of old-time cars among his hobbies.

__________

* This supersedes Press Release BIO/5396 of 25 May 2021.