Ambassador Lakhdar Brahimi was appointed Special Adviser to the Secretary-General in January of 2004. As Special Adviser, Ambassador Brahimi advised the Secretary-General on a wide range of issues, including situations in the areas of conflict prevention and conflict resolution. Ambassador Brahimi is the former Special Representative to the Secretary-General for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan; he held this position from 2001 to 2004. He was entrusted with overall authority for the political, human rights, relief, recovery, and reconstruction activities of the United Nations in Afghanistan. He also previously served as the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Afghanistan from 1997 until 1999.
In between his Afghanistan assignments, Ambassador 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. The “Brahimi Report,” released by the panel in 2000, 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.
Prior to his first Afghanistan appointment, Ambassador Brahimi served as Special Representative to Haiti and South Africa from 1993-1996. He later led the United Nations Observer Mission to South Africa until the 1994 democratic elections that resulted in Nelson Mandela taking the presidency of post-apartheid South Africa. He also undertook special missions on behalf of the Secretary-General to a number of countries, including Democratic Republic of Congo, Yemen, Liberia, Nigeria and Sudan.
Ambassador Brahimi was Minister for Foreign Affairs of Algeria from 1991 to 1993. He served as Rapporteur to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (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. Ambassador Brahimi 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, resident in Jakarta.
Ambassador Brahimi was educated in law and political science in Algeria and France.
