Lakhdar Brahimi


Lakhdar Brahimi is an Algerian United Nations diplomat who served as the United Nations and Arab League Special Envoy to Syria until 14 May 2014. He was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Algeria from 1991 to 1993.
He is also a member of The Elders, a group of world leaders working for global peace. 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 has also been a Member of the Global Leadership Foundation since 2008, an organization which works to promote good governance around the world. He is currently a distinguished senior fellow at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance at the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a governing board member of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. He relinquished his post as UN Special Envoy to Syria on 31 May 2014.

Early life and education

Brahimi was born in 1934 in El Azizia near Tablat, Algeria, about 60 km south of Algiers. He was educated in Algeria and in France where he studied law and political science. He joined the campaign for independence in 1956. Based in Jakarta for five years, he was the representative of the National Liberation Front in South East Asia, touring the region in search of diplomatic support.

Career

Brahimi was the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan and Iraq. Before his appointment in 2001 by the Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, he had served the U.N. as special representative to Haiti and to South Africa. Before coming to the U.N., Brahimi, who represented the National Liberation Front in Tunis during Algeria's independence movement in 1956–1961, was an Arab League official and the Algerian Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1991 until 1993. Brahimi was also chair of the Panel on United Nations Peace Operations, which produced the influential Brahimi Report.
On a visit to Baghdad in April 2004 to help determine how and when Iraqi elections can be held, he said that the recent violence threatened to delay Iraqi national assembly elections—the national assembly is to pick the president and write a constitution.
Brahimi suggested that the Iraq Interim Governing Council should be dissolved, and that most of its members should not have any role in the new government. Though the council was in fact dissolved early, some of its members will have major roles in the new government. The president, one of the two vice-presidents, and the prime minister are all from the council. Most prominently, his criticism of Ahmed Chalabi has led to Chalabi's claim that Brahimi is an Arab nationalist who should have no role in determining the future of Iraq. At the same time, close allies of Chalabi have been pushing claims that various world leaders and the UN took bribes from Saddam Hussein under the Oil for Food program.
In May 2004, Brahimi was supposed to play a large advisory role in the appointment of candidates, which ended up selecting as Iraq's new interim President and Prime Minister: Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer and Iyad Allawi, respectively. However, Brahimi expressed serious disappointment and frustration about his role. "Bremer is the dictator of Iraq, He has the money. He has the signature.... I will not say who was my first choice, and who was not my first choice... I will remind you that the Americans are governing this country." According to a person who spoke with him, "He was very disappointed, very frustrated," al Dulame said. "I asked him why he didn't say that publicly he said, 'I am the U.N. envoy to Iraq, how can I admit to failure?'" Brahimi announced his resignation, resulting from "great difficulties and frustration experienced during his assignment in Iraq", at the UN in New York on 12 June. While serving as the United Nations envoy to Iraq, he described Israel's policy towards the Palestinians as "the big poison in the region".
On 5 February 2008, the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, appointed Brahimi to lead a panel investigation on United Nations staff security in the wake of the Algiers bombings of 11 December 2007. He was one of the founders of the French language Journal of Palestine Studies called La revue d'étude palestinienne.
On 17 August 2012, Brahimi was appointed by the United Nations as the new peace envoy to Syria, replacing Kofi Annan.
On 13 May 2014, UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon announced that Brahimi would resign as the special envoy to Syria on 31 May 2014.
Brahimi addressed a police academy in December 2016, expressing his wish that Algeria and Morocco should “leave the Sahara issue aside in an effort to build a communal economy based on exchange.” His statement caused shockwaves in Algeria.
In March 2019, he is mandated by Abdelaziz Bouteflika to preside over the national conference that is to propose a new constitution and set the date of the presidential election.

Career history

Honours

Brahimi is fluent in Arabic, French and English.
He is married to Mila Bacic Brahimi, and has three children: Salah Brahimi is the CEO of Grey Matter International, a consultant company, located in Washington, DC, where he lives with his wife, Dr. Doaa Taha, and his two children; Princess Rym al-Ali, who was a CNN correspondent in Baghdad during the 2003 Iraq War, is married to Prince Ali bin Hussein. She lives in Amman, Jordan, with her husband and two children, Jalila and Abdullah ibn Ali; and Salem Brahimi, who lives in Paris, France, just a block away from his parents, with his wife Lawrence Brahimi, and his two children.

Published works