Lakhdar Brahimi

Lakhdar Brahimi (Algerian pronunciation: ; ; ; born 1 January 1934) 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 served as chairman of the United Nations Panel on United Nations Peace Operations in 2000. Its highly influential report "Report of the Panel on United Nations Peacekeeping" is known as "The Brahimi Report". 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 (Algeria) in South East Asia, touring the region in search of diplomatic support. Career