Biographical Note
Mr. Said Djinnit of Algeria has been
appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as his
Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Office for West
Africa (UNOWA). He replaced General Lamine Cissé who has been serving as
Officer-in-Charge of UNOWA since September 2007 when Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah
of Mauritania was reassigned as the Secretary-General’s Special
Representative for Somalia.
Mr. Said Djinnit most recently served as the
Commissioner for Peace and Security at the African Union. He has also
served in various positions in the Organization of African Unity (OAU), now
African Union, including as OAU Assistant Secretary General for Political
Affairs. During his career with this body, he was instrumental in
elaborating the new African peace and security agenda and architecture and
in the institutional transformation of OAU to AU. He has spearheaded efforts
by the General Secretariat/Commission in supporting peace processes on the
continent, including Ethiopia-Eritrea, Democratic Republic of the Congo,
Burundi, Comoros, Madagascar, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Côte
d’Ivoire, Liberia, Sudan and Somalia.
He led efforts of the General
Secretariat/Commission in conceiving and operationalizing important OAU/AU
initiatives, including: the Protocol on the African Union Peace and
Security Council (2002); the Conceptual Framework on the African Standby
Force and Military Staff Committee; the Common African Defense and Security
Policy; the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic
Community relating to the Pan-African Parliament; the Declaration on the
Framework for an OAU Response to Unconstitutional Changes of Government
(2000); the Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on
the Rights of Women in Africa; and the Conference on Security, Stability,
Development and Cooperation in Africa (CSSDCA).
Special assignment and achievements include:
his lead role in the African Union Commission efforts for the deployment of
the first ever African Union peacekeeping operation under the mandate of the
Central Organ for Conflict Prevention, Management and Resolution (the
African Mission in Burundi -MIAB); he led the Organization of African Unity
team which participated in the proximity talks between Ethiopia and Eritrea
that culminated in the signing by the two parties of the Algiers agreements
of June and December 2000; and he has served as Chairman of the OAU
Secretariat Task Force on the drafting of the Constitutive Act of the
African Union (1999-2000). He played a leading role in the peace processes
in Sudan (Darfur) and Somalia and in the deployment by the AU of African
mission in Sudan (AMIS) and subsequently the AU-UN Hybride Operation (UNAMID)
and the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).
Mr. Djinnit has served in various diplomatic
missions for his native Algeria, including in Brussels, as Chargé d’Affaires
of the Algerian Embassy, as well as Deputy Head of Mission in Addis Ababa.
He holds a diploma of the “Ecole Nationale d’Administration” (Diplomacy). He
has also studied at the Centre for International Relations Studies,
University of Brussels, and at the Institute of Political Affairs,
University of Algiers.
Mr. Djinnit was born on 7 June 1954. He is
fluent in Arabic, French and English. He is married with three children.
