Brahimi

Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran diplomat and former special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, is on campus this semester as the inaugural International Practitioner-in-Residence at the Mario Einaudi Center for International Studies.

During his residency from Feb. 28 to April 8, Brahimi is co-teaching International Conflict and Conflict Resolution, a course at the Cornell Law School, with professor Muna Ndulo. He draws from personal and professional experience with conflicts he had a role in resolving or managing, and shares with students the practitioner’s perspective and lessons learned.

Brahimi will be the keynote speaker March 22 at “Syria and the Middle East: Refugees, Internally Displaced Persons, and Asylum Seekers in Long-Term Global Crises,” a roundtable discussion organized by the Einaudi Center and the Law School.

He also will lead a select group of students on a one-day visit to the United Nations in New York March 29, during spring break. Students will have an opportunity to meet and interact with U.N. senior officials, diplomats and others who specialize in peace and security issues.

Brahimi has provided the Cornell community with significant insights on international affairs as the 2006 Bartels World Affairs Fellow and an A.D. White Professor-at-Large from 2008 to 2015. His distinguished diplomatic career has involved negotiating peace and resolving conflicts between and within nations.

Brahimi was Algeria’s ambassador to Egypt, Sudan and the Arab League (1963-70) and ambassador to the United Kingdom (1971-79). After serving as minister of foreign affairs from 1991 to 1993, he retired from national service and began a new career with the United Nations, working on behalf of the U.N. secretary-general, including special missions in several African nations (1996-97). He was special envoy and head of the U.N.’s observer mission to South Africa (1993-94) and special envoy to Haiti (1994-96), Afghanistan (1997-99 and 2001-04) and Iraq (2004). From 2012 to May 2014, he was special envoy to Syria, leading the joint U.N.-Arab League peace mission.

He is a member of The Elders, a group of world leaders working together for global peace and human rights, brought together by Nelson Mandela in 2007; and the Global Leadership Forum.