Lakhdar Brahimi

“We’re extremely careful not to claim that we’re going to take a problem and solve it. What we’re saying is that from time to time, in certain situations, a problem needs a little push.”Read more

Biography

Lakhdar Brahimi was born in Algeria in 1934 and educated in Algeria and France. He joined his country’s liberation struggle as a student and represented the National Liberation Front in Indonesia for five years. Following Algerian independence in 1962, he served his country as an ambassador, first to Egypt and then to the United Kingdom.

In 1989, as the Special Envoy of the Arab League Tripartite Committee to Lebanon, Brahimi brokered the Taif Agreement which ended the country’s seventeen-year long civil war. He served as Foreign Minister for Algeria until 1993, and has led numerous UN missions, including the United Nations Observer Mission that preceded the 1994 democratic elections in South Africa, resulting in Nelson Mandela’s election as President.

As Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2004, he was entrusted with overall authority for the political, human rights, relief, recovery and reconstruction activities. Mr. Brahimi also served as the Secretary-General's Special Envoy for Afghanistan from July 1997 until October 1999.

In between his Afghanistan assignments, Brahimi chaired an independent panel established by Secretary-General Annan to review United Nations peace operations. The report, released by the panel in 2000 and known as the "Brahimi 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.

Since 2001, Mr. Brahimi has also served as UN special envoy in Iraq. He now lectures regularly in the U.S., Europe, Africa and the Arab world on international relations, conflict and conflict resolution.