Ban appoints veteran diplomat as deputy head of UN Guinea-Bissau office

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today appointed Marco Carmignani of Brazil as his Deputy Special Representative with the United Nations Peacebuilding Support Office in Guinea-Bissau (UNIOGBIS).

With more than two decades of service with the UN, Mr. Carmignani brings with him a wealth of political and leadership experience. For the past seven years, he served in peacekeeping and political missions in the Middle East as Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff.

Prior to that, he held a number of senior positions at the UN Secretariat in New York and in Africa, including with the UN Operation in Burundi (ONUB).

Three decades after gaining its independence from Portugal, coup-prone Guinea-Bissau remains one of the world’s poorest countries. Deployed in the aftermath of a crippling civil war in the late-1990s, the UN Peacebuilding Support Office worked to help the small West African nation cast off a legacy of violent conflict and establish a stable civilian democracy. On 1 January 2010, it was replaced by the UN Integrated Peacebuilding Office, UNIOGBIS.