NEW PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE OF NORWAY PRESENTS CREDENTIALS TO DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF UNOG

Wegger Christian Strommen, the new Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations Office at Geneva, today presented his credentials to Sergei Ordzhonikidze, the Director-General of the United Nations Office at Geneva and other international organizations in Geneva.

Prior to his appointment to Geneva, Mr. Strommen had been serving as Deputy Permanent Representative of Norway to the United Nations in New York since 2002. Concurrently, he served as the Chairman of the United Nations’ Support Group for the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict. From 2000 to 2002, he served as Norway’s Deputy Representative to the United Nations Security Council and Chairman of the Security Council Working Group on Peacekeeping Operations.

Mr. Strommen began his diplomatic career in 1984 when he joined the Legal Department in the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From 1986 to 1987, he served as a district court judge in Norway before returning to the Ministry to take up a foreign assignment at the Norwegian Embassy in Tel Aviv, where he was posted from 1988 to 1991. He was posted to Geneva in 1991 where he worked as a first secretary at the Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations. From 1993 to 1995, he served as legal adviser to Lord David Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg, the Co-Chairmen of the Steering Committee of the International Conference on the former Yugoslavia.

In 1995, Mr. Strommen returned to Oslo to head the Legal Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in 1999 he became Deputy Foreign Minister of Norway. During his career, he also worked briefly as a partner in a private law firm in Norway.

Mr. Strommen has a law degree from the University of Oslo Law School and has served as a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, and the Universities of Bergen and Oslo. He has also published several articles on international law, constitutional law and human rights.

Born on 14 June 1959, Mr. Strommen is married and has two children.

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