Letter dated 5 September 2006 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of Jordan to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council I have the honour to forward a letter, with enclosure, addressed to you by the Foreign Minister of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, Abdelelah M. al-Khatib. (Signed) Basheer F. Zoubi Deputy Permanent Representative Chargé d’affaires a.i. Annex to the letter dated 5 September 2006 from the Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the Permanent Mission of Jordan to the United Nations addressed to the President of the Security Council 5 September 2006 On behalf of the Government of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, I have the honour to present to the Security Council, for its consideration, the candidacy of H.R.H. Prince Zeid Ra’ad, Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations, for the position of Secretary-General of the United Nations. I also have the honour to attach a biographical sketch of Prince Zeid and request that this letter, together with its enclosure, be brought to the attention of the members of the Security Council, and be circulated as a document of the Security Council. (Signed) Abdelelah M. al-Khatib Enclosure Biographical note Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein Prince Zeid is Jordan’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations, a post he has held since August 2000. In the course of his distinguished career as a diplomat, peacekeeper and international mediator, Prince Zeid has developed a unique experience in the United Nations most challenging issues in the twenty-first century. He has also consistently challenged the United Nations to live up to its founding ideals as a servant of all the world’s peoples, and the instrument of its Member States in advancing development, peace and security. In 1997, as Jordan’s Deputy Representative, he was the first and only official in the General Assembly to demand publicly a complete United Nations report on the Srebrenica massacre, Europe’s worst atrocity since 1945. The following year, he led a campaign among Member States to this effect, which culminated in a call by the General Assembly for a definitive account. The Secretary-General responded by producing a report widely considered to have been groundbreaking in both its honesty and its thoroughness. An expert in the field of international justice, Prince Zeid also played a central role in the establishment of the International Criminal Court. He chaired, for example, over the course of two years, the complex, often pioneering, negotiations on the “elements” of the individual offences falling under the categories of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Courts around the world now cite the definitions for crimes against humanity, refined by the elements, as authoritative. In September 2002, Prince Zeid was elected the first president of the governing body of the International Criminal Court, at a time when the Court was only a plan on paper, with no officials or even an address to its name and, in three years, oversaw the Court’s growth into the institution it has now become. He has also been active on other legal issues. He was the first of two United Nations ambassadors to chair the Ad Hoc Committee on the Scope of Legal Protection under the Convention on the Safety of United Nations and Associated Personnel. In the spring of 2004, he was chosen to be Chairman of the Panel of Experts for the Secretary-General’s Trust Fund to Assist States in the Settlement of Disputes through the International Court of Justice, in the matter relating to the boundary dispute between Benin and the Niger. Earlier that year, he was also appointed by his Government as Jordan’s representative, and head of delegation, before the International Court of Justice in the matter relating to the wall being built by Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Having served as a political affairs officer in UNPROFOR in the former Yugoslavia from February 1994 to February 1996, and having worked intimately with peacekeeping issues for over the last decade, Prince Zeid’s knowledge of United Nations peacekeeping is also extensive. Following allegations of widespread abuse being committed by United Nations peacekeepers in the summer of 2004, he was appointed Adviser to the Secretary-General on sexual exploitation and abuse. In the spring of 2005, he produced a report on this subject, praised subsequently by international civil society for having been “revolutionary” in its approach. It provided, for the first time, a comprehensive strategy for the elimination of sexual exploitation and abuse in United Nations peacekeeping operations. The report was endorsed in full, by the 191 Heads of State and Government, in September 2005. Prince Zeid currently chairs the Consultative Committee for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) and has, over the past two years, led an effort to establish greater strategic direction for the Fund. Born in Amman, and educated in Jordan, the United Kingdom and the United States, Prince Zeid holds a B.A. from Johns Hopkins University, and degrees of M.Phil. and Ph.D. from Cambridge (Christ’s College). In 1989, he received his commission as an officer in the Jordanian Desert Police (the successor to the Arab Legion) until 1994. His publications include “A Nightmare Avoided: Jordan and Suez 1956” in Israel Affairs (winter 1994), and “Religious Militancy in the Arab Middle East: Threats and Responses 1979-1988” in the Cambridge Review of International Affairs (spring 1989). Prince Zeid is a member of the Advisory Committee to the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation. He is married to Princess Sarah Zeid, and they have a son and a daughter.   sss1 \* MERGEFORMAT S/2006/708 sss1 \* MERGEFORMAT S/2006/708 FooterJN \* MERGEFORMAT 06-48779 \* MERGEFORMAT 4 \* MERGEFORMAT 3 FooterJN \* MERGEFORMAT 06-48779 United Nations S/2006/708 Security Council Distr.: General 5 September 2006 Original: English jobn \* MERGEFORMAT 06-48779 (E) 060906 Barcode \* MERGEFORMAT *0648779*