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Date: April 8, 1999
President of UN General Assembly to Speak on Administrative Reform
Princeton, N.J. -- Didier Opertti, president of the United Nations General Assembly, will give a talk titled "The United Nations: The Path to Administrative Reform" at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs on Thursday, April 22, at 4:30 p.m. in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall.
The General Assembly is the main deliberative organ of the United Nations, composed of representatives of all member states, each of which has one vote. Although the decisions of the assembly have no legally binding force for governments, they carry the weight of world opinion on major international issues.
Before Opertti was elected president of the General Assembly in 1998, he was the minister for foreign affairs of Uruguay. He had previously served as his country's minister of the interior and as its permanent ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS) from 1988 to 1993. In that capacity, he was also president of the Permanent Council of the OAS (1990), and president of the Permanent Council's Commission of Juridical and Political Matters (1989).
In the 1980s, Opertti was the Special Juridical Counsellor to the Inter-American Children's Institute (IIN), where he worked on international private law matters related to minors and the family, including the civil and criminal aspects of such issues as international adoption of children, food subsidies, international restitution of children and the international kidnapping of children.
His talk is being sponsored by the Woodrow Wilson School.