Søren Jessen-Petersen (born 1945) is a Danish lawyer and civil servant. He was named Special Representative of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

Secretary-General for

Kosovo Kosovo ( sq, Kosova or ; sr-Cyrl, Косово ), officially the Republic of Kosovo ( sq, Republika e Kosovës, links=no; sr, Република Косово, Republika Kosovo, links=no), is a partially recognised state in Southeast Euro ...

and head of UNMIK on 16 July 2004. He held the position until the end of June 2006. Jessen-Petersen is currently an adjunct professor of International Relations at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, where he teaches a course titled, "Economic Migrants, Refugees, and Human Security." He is also a Guest Scholar at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP). Jessen-Petersen has had a long and distinguished career in the United Nations. A lawyer and journalist by training, he began his service in 1972 with the office of the

UN High Commissioner for Refugees The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integratio ...

(UNHCR) in Africa. He then held senior positions at UNHCR before opening the UNHCR regional office in Stockholm in 1986. In 1989, he served as Special Adviser to the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, and as a member of the Secretary-General's Task Force on Namibian independence. Between 1990 and 1993, Jessen-Petersen served as Chef de Cabinet of the High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva while also serving as Director of External Relations (1992-1994). Between August 1994 and January 1998 he was Director of the UNHCR Liaison Office at the UN Headquarters in New York, while serving as the High Commissioner's Special Envoy to the former Yugoslavia, based in Sarajevo (December 1995 and September 1996). Jessen-Petersen served as Assistant UN High Commissioner for Refugees (January 1998 to December 2001). He then served as the Chairman of the European Union Stability Pact's Migration, Asylum, Refugees Regional Initiative (MARRI), where he initiated and directed a strategy to manage population movements in the Western Balkans. Jessen-Petersen also chaired the MARRI Steering Committee. His most recent UN assignment was that of Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General in Kosovo and head of UNMIK (August 2004 to July 2006) at the level of UN Under Secretary-General. Jessen-Petersen worked for the diplomatic advisory group

Independent Diplomat Independent Diplomat is a non-profit non-governmental organisation founded in 2004 by British former diplomat Carne Ross to give advice and assistance in diplomatic strategy and technique to governments and political groups. It provides diplomat ...

, founded by

Carne Ross Carne Ross (born 1966) is the founder and executive director of Independent Diplomat, a diplomatic advisory group. Career After graduating from Exeter University, Ross joined the British Foreign Office and worked at the UK embassy in Bonn, Ger ...

, and is the former Director of its Washington office. He currently resides in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, Denmark.

External links

Søren Jessen-Petersen
at sais-jhu.edu
Søren Jessen-Petersen
at unmikonline.org 1945 births Living people Danish diplomats People from Nørresundby United Nations Mission in Kosovo Danish officials of the United Nations Special Representatives of the Secretary-General of the United Nations {{UN-bio-stub