Boutros Boutros-Ghali has been the president of South Centre in Geneva since May 2003. He was elected the first Secretary-General of the International Organisation of the Francophonie at the VIIth Francophone Summit, held in Vietnam in November 1997. He is a diplomat, lawyer, academic and author of numerous publications..

From 1992 to 1996, Boutros Boutros-Ghali was Secretary-General of the United Nations Organisation. Prior to this, he was Deputy Prime Minister of Egypt for Foreign Affairs from May 1991.

Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in the Egyptian government from October 1977, Boutros Boutros-Ghali took part in the Camp David Summit Conference in September 1978 and participated in the negotiation of the Camp David accords which were signed between Egypt and Israel in 1979.

Prior to being elected member of the Egyptian Parliament in 1987, he was a member of the Secretariat of the National Democratic Party from 1980, and was also Vice-President of the Internationale Socialiste.

From 1949 to 1977, Boutros Boutros-Ghali was professor of international law and international relations at Cairo University, and from 1974 to 1977 was a member of the Central Committee and the Political Bureau of the Arab Socialist Union.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali has held many functions, including the following: Member of the Commission of International Law of the United Nations (1979 to 1991); Member of the International Commission of Jurists (1975-1977); Member of the Institute of International Law (1975-1985); Member of the International Institute of Human Rights (1975-1992); President of the African Society of Political Studies (1980-1991); Associate Member of the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques (Institut de France, Paris – since 1989). He has taken part in numerous meetings dealing with international law, human rights, economic and social development, decolonization, the Middle East question, international humanitarian law, minority rights (in particular, ethnic minority rights), non-alignment, the development of the Mediterranean region and Afro-Arab cooperation.

Founder and editor for fifteen years of the publication Al-Ahram Iktisadi and founder of the quarterly review Al-Siyassa Dawlya, of which he was director until 1991, Boutros Boutros-Ghali is the author of Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem (published in 1997 by Random House). In this publication, which won the “Prix Mediterranée Etranger” 1998, Boutros Boutros-Ghali relates from a personal point of view when he was Minister of State for Foreign Affairs in the Egyptian government, the negotiations which were to lead to the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel. Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga (1999, Random House) a publication in which he relates the five years he spent as Secretary-General of the United Nations. It has been translated into French, Arabic and into other languages. “Démocratiser la mondialisation” (2002, Editions du Rocher) is Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s latest publication in French and is to be translated into other languages.