HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS APPOINTS NEW REPRESENTATIVE IN COLOMBIA

10 July 2006


United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour has announced the appointment of Juan Pablo Corlazzoli as head of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Colombia.

"The work of our Office in Colombia is extremely important and I am pleased to have someone with Mr. Corlazzoli's vast experience lead our efforts there", Mrs. Arbour said.

Mr. Corlazzoli has worked for over 20 years in the fields of human rights and peace-building as a representative of the United Nations in the region. He has served as the main Advisor of the United Nations Moderator for the Guatemala Peace Accords of 1996; as advisor in United Nations programmes for the demobilization and reinsertion of ex-combatants, and on the return of internally displaced persons in El Salvador and Guatemala. He was Field Coordinator and Deputy Head of the United Nations Verification Mission in Guatemala from 1999 to 2000 and went on to become interim Special Representative of the Secretary-General in that operation. From 2001 to 2005, he was the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Guatemala. For the last year he served as Executive Director of the Programme for the Development of Democracy in Latin America of the United Nations Development Programme.

Mr. Corlazzoli is expected to assume his functions in August this year. OHCHR Colombia has been operating for the past ten years, monitoring the human rights situation in the country and assisting State and non-governmental institutions in efforts to strengthen national human rights protection.