H.E.
Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser
H.E. Mr.
Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser was elected President
of the sixty-sixth session of the United Nations
General Assembly
in June 2011.
A
veteran diplomat, Mr. Al-Nasser has contributed
to advancing the multilateral agenda in the
realms of peace and security, sustainable
development and South-South cooperation over a
career spanning nearly four decades.
From
1998 to 2011, Mr. Al-Nasser served as Ambassador
and Permanent Representative of Qatar to the
United Nations. During this period, he played
leading roles as Chairman of the General
Assembly's Special Political and Decolonization
(Fourth) Committee (2009 to 2010) and as
President of the General Assembly High-level
Committee on South-South Cooperation (2007 to
2009). He also chaired the Group of 77 and China
at the United Nations in New York (2004),
guiding action that paved the way for the Second
South Summit of the Group, which took place in
Doha, Qatar, the following year, and led to the
establishment of the South Fund for Development
and Humanitarian Affairs, a financing mechanism
aimed at assisting the countries of the South in
addressing issues such as poverty, hunger and
natural disasters.
Mr.
Al-Nasser represented his country on the United
Nations Security Council during the two-year
term of Qatar as a non-permanent member (2006 to
2007). He was Security Council President for the
month of December 2006, when the Council took
action on a range of complex peace and security
issues, including international cooperation to
combat terrorism and the protection of
journalists in armed conflict. He also presided
over three of the subsidiary bodies of the
Council.
During
his term as Ambassador to the United Nations,
Mr. Al-Nasser also served as a Vice-President of
the fifty-seventh session of the United Nations
General Assembly (2002 to 2003) and represented
his country at numerous international and
regional conferences and other forums. At the
same time, he served as non-resident Ambassador
to a number of countries in the Americas,
including Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Canada,
Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and
Uruguay.
Earlier,
Mr. Al-Nasser was appointed as his country's
resident Ambassador to Jordan (1993 to 1998),
before which he was first posted to the
Permanent Mission of Qatar to the United
Nations, New York, as Minister Plenipotentiary
(1986 to 1993).
Mr.
Al-Nasser entered the international arena at an
early age, and was appointed Attaché at the
Embassy of Qatar in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1972. He
was assigned to the Embassy of his country in
Islamabad, Pakistan, in 1975 and, later that
year, was dispatched to Dubai, United Arab
Emirates, where he served as Consul-General for
Qatar through August 1981.
The
recipient of numerous decorations and awards,
Mr. Al-Nasser was made an honorary fellow of the
Foreign Policy Association in New York in 2009
and received an honorary doctorate in
international affairs from Chongqing University
(China) in 2007. A wide range of countries have
conferred on him their national awards,
including the Medal of Independence of the
Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
(1998); Grand Officer, Order of Merit (Italy,
2004); Medal of Grand Commander of the Order of
Makarios III (Cyprus, 2007); National Order of
Doctor José Matias Delgado (El Salvador, 2007);
and Commander of the National Order of the
Republic (Côte d'Ivoire, 2008).
In his
private capacity, Mr. Al-Nasser serves on the
boards of a number of institutions, including
the Board of Advisors of the New York University
Center for Dialogues. Educated in Doha and
Beirut, he is fluent in Arabic and English.
Mr.
Al-Nasser was born in 1953 in Doha.
He is married to Muna Rihani and has one son,
Abdulaziz.