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Joakim Reiter of Sweden appointed Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD


Press Release
For use of information media - Not an official record
UNCTAD/PRESS/PR/2015/001
Joakim Reiter of Sweden appointed Deputy Secretary-General of UNCTAD

Geneva, Switzerland, 9 January 2015

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in consultation with Mukhisa Kituyi , Secretary-General of UNCTAD, has appointed Joakim Reiter of Sweden as Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development at the Assistant Secretary-General level. He will assume his new position on 1 April 2015. Mr. Reiter will replace Petko Draganov, from Bulgaria.

"I am looking forward to working with Mr. Reiter", said Mr. Kituyi. "He brings to this position a wealth of international experience in the trade and development field dealing with multilateral organizations, senior political experience as a representative of his country, hands on experience on the technical cooperation front from his work on the donor side with Sweden and highly relevant negotiations skills within the intergovernmental machinery."

Currently, he holds the position of Deputy Director General, heading the Department for International Trade Policy responsible for interaction with UNCTAD, WTO and OECD within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Sweden.

From 2011 to 2014, he held the position of Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sweden to the World Trade Organization, Switzerland, where he also served as chair for the WTO bodies on services, goods and trade policy reviews respectively. From 2008 to 2011, Mr. Reiter was Minister Counsellor and Head of Trade Section at the Representation of Sweden to the European Union, Belgium. From 2004 to 2008, he served at the European Union Directorate General for Trade in European Commission, where he was involved in a number of multilateral, regional and bilateral negotiations with countries at different levels of development.

Before that, he held various positions within the Swedish National Board of Trade, Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Industry, including as Special Advisor to the Minister for Industry and Trade, responsible for drafting the government's strategy for equitable globalization and its communication on global financial stability as well as taking part in the formulation of its policy coherence for development.

Born in Sweden in 1974, Mr. Reiter holds a Master of Science from the London School of Economics and a MA from University of Lund, Sweden. He is married and has 2 children.