María Emma Mejía Vélez

María Emma Mejía Vélez
Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations
Assumed office
18 February 2014
Preceded by Néstor Osorio
Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR)
In office
9 May 2011  11 June 2012
Preceded by Néstor Kirchner
Succeeded by Alí Rodríguez Araque
Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia
In office
July 1996  25 March 1998
President Ernesto Samper Pizano
Preceded by Rodrigo Pardo García-Peña
Succeeded by Camilo Reyes Rodríguez
Minister of National Education of Colombia
In office
July 1995  July 1996
President Ernesto Samper Pizano
Preceded by Arturo Sarabia Bette
Succeeded by Olga Duque de Ospina
Colombia Ambassador to Spain
In office
1993–1995
President César Gaviria Trujillo
Preceded by Ernesto Samper Pizano
Succeeded by Humberto de la Calle Lombana
This name uses Spanish naming customs: the first or paternal family name is Mejía and the second or maternal family name is Vélez.

María Emma Mejía Vélez (born 27 September 1953) is a Colombian politician, diplomat and journalist. She is currently the Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations in New York. For more than two decades she has held high government positions, dedicating most of her career to peace and Latin-American foreign affairs issues.

She served as Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations -UNASUR, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Education, and Ambassador of Colombia to Spain. She has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Advisory Commission of Colombia since 1999.

Ambassador Mejía also ran for Vice-President and Mayor of Bogotá.

Biography

After graduating from Universidad del Valle and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana as a journalist, she enrolled in cinematography and television studies at the BBC in London, where she later worked in the Latin American Radio Broadcast Service.

Her first public post was as the Director the Cinematographic Company (FOCINE) where she successfully achieved greater State support for the Colombian film industry.

In 1990, former President Cesar Gaviria named her as the Head of the Presidential Advisory Office for Medellín, where she gained national recognition for her social work in the most violent territories under the control of the drug cartel of Medellín.

In 1993, Ambassador Mejía became the first woman to be the Ambassador of Colombia to Spain. In 1995, as the Minister of Education, she designed and implemented the first Colombian Ten-Year Education Plan and issued the Manual of the Child written by the Nobel Prize- winning Gabriel García Marquez.

As Minister of Foreign Affairs from1996 to1998, Ambassador Mejía was also the first woman to be designated as the Minister in Charge of the duties of the Office of the President.

In 1999 she took part in the peace process with FARC and in the special commission for the ELN guerrilla groups.

From 2003 to 2011, she worked as Executive President of Pies Descalzos Foundation, a charity founded by the Colombian singer Shakira and was part of its Board of Director until 2014.

In 2011, she was appointed Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations –UNASUR, where she led institutional strengthening through the creation of twelve sectorial committees to address the most relevant issues among the States.

Ambassador Mejía served as Chief of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission in Paraguay in 2009 and Costa Rica in 2010.

In the United Nations she has been Vice- President of the Economic and Social Council -ECOSOC- and currently she is one of the vice-presidents of the General Assembly.

References

www.colombiaun.org

www.cancilleria.gov.co

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