Robert C. Orr

Robert C. Orr Assistant Secretary–General for Policy and Planning United Nations, New York, NY.

"A leading authority on nation-building, peace operations, and counter-terrorism, Robert Orr was named Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations in August 2004. Working directly in the U.N. Secretary-General's office, he is in charge of policy and planning for the United Nations.

"He previously served as a White House Fellow, the director of Global and Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council, a deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the director of the USUN Washington Office, director of the Washington Program for the Council on Foreign Relations--one of the nation's premier foreign policy organizations--and as director of the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. At the request of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Ambassador L. Paul Bremer III, in the summer of 2003 Orr was a member of a five-person delegation that conducted the first independent review of post-conflict operations in Iraq."

"Dr. Orr comes to the United Nations from Harvard University where he served as the Executive Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government. Prior to this, he served as Director of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C.

"From 1996 to 2001, Dr. Orr served in senior posts in the Government of the United States, including Deputy to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and Director of the USUN Washington office, where he was instrumental in securing an agreement to have the United States pay its arrears to the United Nations. He also served as Director of Global and Multilateral Affairs at the National Security Council, where he was responsible for peacekeeping and humanitarian affairs. Prior to this government service, Dr. Orr worked for the International Peace Academy in New York, and with non-governmental organizations in Nairobi, Kenya, with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

"From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Orr co-directed a bipartisan commission on post-conflict reconstruction sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and the Association of the United States Army.

"Dr. Orr has published extensively on post-conflict reconstruction, the United Nations, peacekeeping, and democracy promotion. His publications include Winning the Peace: an American Strategy for Post-Conflict Reconstruction (CSIS Press, 2004) and Keeping the Peace: Multidimensional UN Operations in Cambodia and El Salvador (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

"Dr. Orr received his Ph.D. and M.P.A. in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, and his bachelor’s degree from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He speaks Spanish and Mandarin Chinese."

Married to Audrey Choi in 2000.

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