Lakhdar Brahimi

Lakhdar Brahimi is a former Special Adviser to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.  Brahimi advised the Secretary-General on a wide range of issues, including situations in the areas of conflict prevention and conflict resolution.  From 3 October 2004 to 31 December 2004, Brahimi served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, with overall authority for the political, human rights, relief, recovery and reconstruction activities of the U.N. in Afghanistan.  Before his appointment to Special Representative of the Secretary-General, he served as the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Afghanistan from July 1997 to October 1999.

In between his Afghanistan assignments, Brahimi served as Under-Secretary-General for Special Assignments in Support of the Secretary-General's Preventive and Peacemaking efforts.  In this capacity, he chaired an independent panel established by Secretary-General Kofi Annan to review United Nations peace operations.  Released in 2000, the panel’s final report assessed the shortcomings of the existing system of peacekeeping and made specific recommendations for change, focusing on politics, strategy and operational and organizational areas of need. He also served as the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to Iraq between 2001 and June 2004.

Brahimi served as Special Representative for Haiti from 1994 to 1996, and from 1993 to 1994 as Special Representative for South Africa where he led the U.N. Observer Mission until the 1994 democratic elections that resulted in Nelson Mandela taking the presidency of post-apartheid South Africa.  He has also undertaken special missions on behalf of the Secretary-General to a number of countries, including Zaire (the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Yemen, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sudan.

Brahimi was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Algeria from 1991 to 1993. He served as Rapporteur to the 1992 U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, commonly known as the “Earth Summit.”  From 1984 to 1991, he was Under-Secretary-General of the League of Arab States, and from 1989 to 1991, served as Special Envoy of the Arab League Tripartite Committee to Lebanon, mediating the end of the civil war in that country.  He was Diplomatic Adviser to the President of Algeria from 1982 to 1984, Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1971 to 1979, and Ambassador to Egypt and the Sudan, as well as Permanent Representative to the Arab League in Cairo, from 1963 to 1970.  From 1956 to 1961, during Algeria's independence struggle, he was the National Liberation Front (FLN) representative in South-East Asia.

He retired from his duties at the end of 2005. Brahimi is a member of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor, the first global initiative to focus specifically on the link between exclusion, poverty and law. He is also a member of the Global Leadership Foundation, an organization that works to promote good governance around the world.

Lakhdar Brahimi now lectures regularly in the U.S., Europe, Africa and the Arab world on international relations, conflict and conflict resolution.