SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS WALTER KALIN AS HIS REPRESENTATIVE ON INTERNALLY DISPLACED PERSONS

21 September 2004


Secretary-General Kofi Annan has tasked Walter Kälin, a law professor at Bern University, to act as his Representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons. Supported by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mr. Kälin will serve as an independent Expert and will work in close cooperation with the Emergency Relief Coordinator and, in particular, the Division on Internal Displacement within the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Mr. Kälin is a Professor of constitutional and international public law at the Faculty of Law of Bern, Switzerland. From 1991 to 1992 he served as a Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the situation of human rights in Kuwait under Iraqi occupation. He is currently a member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee and was also one of the key drafters of the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement.