New Permanent Representative of Colombia Presents Credentials to the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva

Gustavo Adolfo Gallón Giraldo, the new Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations Office at Geneva, today presented his credentials to Tatiana Valovaya, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Mr. Gallón Giraldo has served as Director of the Colombian Commission of Jurists since its creation in 1998, and has contributed as a columnist to El Espectador newspaper in Bogota since 2010. He has a wealth of experience with the United Nations, having served as the independent expert on the human rights situation in Haiti for the Human Rights Council from 2013 to 2017, and as the Special Representative on the human rights situation in Equatorial Guinea for the Human Rights Commission from 1999 to 2002. He is active in legal and human rights organizations across the world.

Mr. Gallón Giraldo also has a long academic background, having taught human rights and constitutional law in professorial positions at several universities in Colombia from 1979 to 1997, and as a visiting fellow at the University of Notre Dame in the United States in 1998 and 1999. He has authored and edited several academic texts on legal and human rights-related topics, and served as an independent expert on various commissions created by the Colombian Government.

Mr. Gallón Giraldo graduated as a lawyer from the University Externado de Colombia in Bogotá (1974) and has a master’s degree in political science from the University of Paris 1 (1978). He has pursued post-graduate studies in political sociology at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris (1978-1983).

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CR22.044E