First round table of the Global Governance Series this year. Current United Nations ambassadors will discuss the questions of “Is the UN Able to Manage Global Affairs? Why Reforms of the UN Are Needed?”
Featuring the following UN Ambassadors:
H.E.Ambassador Vladimir Drobnjak, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Croatia to the United Nations.
Prior to his appointment as the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Croatia to the United Nations in 2013 Ambassador Drobnjak headed the Mission of Croatia to the European Union.
He began his diplomatic career in 1992, when he became Deputy Permanent Representative of Croatia to the United Nations in New York. Since then, his assignments have included Assistant Minister and Head of the Division of Multilateral Affairs in Zagreb, Member of the Negotiating Team of Croatia for the Stabilization and Association Agreement with the European Union, and Chief Negotiator for the negotiations on the accession of Croatia to the European Union.
Mr. Drobnjak also worked as a United States- and United Nations-based correspondent for the Croatian daily newspapers Vjesnik and Večernji list, and for Croatian radio and television, from 1988 and 1992. He was Editor-in-Chief of the Sunday Vjesnik between 1986 and 1988.
Representing his country at the United Nations Ambassador Drobnjak was elected as a Chair of the Special Political and Decolonization Committee (Fourth Committee) of the General Assembly; Member of UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters; Chair of the UN Disarmament Commission; Vice-President of Economic and Social Council; Chair of the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission; Co-Chair of the Ad-hoc Working Group on the Revitalization of the Work of the UN General Assembly. Mr. Drobnjak was educated at the University of Zagreb School of Law, from which he holds a Juris Doctor degree.
H.E.Ambassador Mohamed Khaled Khiari, Permanent Representative of Tunisia to the United Nations
From September 2011 until his appointment as Permanent Representative of Tunisia to the United Nations in November 2012 Mr. Khiari was Director of Human Rights within the Department of International Organizations and Conferences at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was previously appointed Chargé de Mission in the Ministry of Youth and Sports in July 2009, and Deputy Director, Euromed, within the Ministry’s Europe Department in September 2006.
Alternating between Foreign Ministry headquarters in Tunis and overseas postings, Mr. Khiari was assigned to the Permanent Mission of Tunisia to the United Nations at Geneva in October 2003, after having been appointed Deputy Director in the Human Rights Department at the Ministry in September 2002. He had previously been posted to his country’s Embassy to the European Union in Brussels in September 1996.
Prior to his October 1994 appointment as Acting Deputy Director for the United Nations and the Security Council in the Ministry’s Department of International Organizations and Conferences, he was assigned to the Cabinet of the Minister for Foreign Affairs in March of that year. August 1987 saw his first posting to the United Nations in Geneva, having joined the Ministry’s Department of Maghreb Countries in 1984.
Representing his country at the UN Ambassador Khiari was elected to various UN bodies. Currently he is a Co-Chair of the Intergovernmental Negotiations on Security Council reform (IGN). Mr. Khiari is a graduate of the Haut Institut de Gestion in Tunis, where he earned a master’s degree in management, specializing in marketing.