Jordanian Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, the U.N.’s newly appointed incoming High Commissioner for Human Right during the 27th regular session of the Human Rights Council (8 to 26 September 2014) in Geneva, Switzerland

Jordanian Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid al-Hussein, the U.N.’s newly appointed incoming High Commissioner for Human Right during the 27th regular session of the Human Rights Council (8 to 26 September 2014) in Geneva, Switzerland

Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein assumed his functions as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on 1 September 2014, following the General Assembly’s approval on 16 June 2014 of his appointment by the United Nations Secretary-General. He will be the seventh individual to lead the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and the first Asian, Muslim and Arab to do so.

A veteran multilateral diplomat, Mr. Al Hussein was previously Jordan’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, a post he held from September 2010 until July 2014, and which he also held from 2000 to 2007. From 2007 to 2010 he was Jordan’s Ambassador to the United States of America. He served as Jordan’s Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, with the rank of Ambassador, from 1996 to 2000. In January 2014, he was President of the UN Security Council and chaired the Security Council’s 1533 and 1521 committees with regard to two sanctions regimes regarding the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia.