Welcome to the United Nations
- H.E. Mr. Ola Elvestuen, President of the UN Environment Assembly, Minister of Climate and Environment, Norway
- Ms. Michelle Bachelet Jeria, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
- Mr. Boris Greguška, Chair of the UNFF14 Bureau, Chief State Counsellor, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Slovak Republic
- Ms. Jayathma Wickramanayake, UN Secretary-General’s envoy on Youth
- Mr. Guy Ryder, Director-General of ILO
High-Level Political Forum 2019
Under the auspices of ECOSOC and General Assembly
9 - 18 July 2019 New YorkMessages to the HLPF
Biographies
H.E. Mr. Ola Elvestuen
President of the UN Environment Assembly, Minister of Climate and Environment of Norway
Mr. Ola Elvestuen is the President of the UN Environment Assembly and Minister of Climate and Environment of Norway.
Ola Elvestuen was born on the 9th of October 1967, at Vestre Toten, in the county of Oppland. He spent his childhood at the small town of Eina.
Elvestuen holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Oslo, having studied Social Anthropology, Political Science and History. He started a major in History. He has undertaken leadership training at the Norwegian Defence College.
Elvestuen was first elected to the Oslo City Council in 2003, and headed the City Development Committee from 2003 to 2011. He was city councillor for Environment and Transportation in Oslo during 2011-2013.
Elvestuen was leader of the Oslo branch of the Liberal Party from 2000-2007, and has been deputy leader in the Liberal Party since 2008.
In 2013, he was elected to Parliament, from Oslo, and he was re-elected in 2017. He has since 2013 chaired the parliamentary Committee on Energy and Environment.
On Friday the 17 of January, he was appointed as Minister of Climate and Environment of Norway.
H.E. Ms. Michelle Bachelet
former President of Chile and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights
Michelle Bachelet was the first woman to hold Chile’s presidency and later became the United Nations’ high commissioner for human rights.
Bachelet was twice elected as Chile’s president, serving from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2014 to 2018. She had previously been the first woman to serve Chile — or any Latin American nation — as defense minister, from 2002 to 2004. Bachelet also served as the country’s health minister from 2000 to 2002.
Following her second term as president, Bachelet was appointed by UN Secretary General António Guterres as the United Nations high commissioner for human rights. She held the position as the UN’s principal human rights official from 2018 to 2022, spearheading the organization’s human rights efforts around the world.
She has also served in leadership roles at multiple international organizations — including as the first executive director of UN Women, as chair of the Partnership for Maternal Newborn, and Child Health, and as chair of the ILO’s Social Protection Floor Advisory Group.
Bachelet’s career in government and human rights originates from her studies in medicine at the University of Chile. During the Pinochet regime (1973–1990), her father died from a heart attack that was a result of torture, and in 1975, she and her mother were imprisoned and exiled. Despite these hardships, Bachelet continued her medical studies in Berlin, returning to her home country in 1979 to specialize in pediatrics and public health at the Roberto del Río Children’s Hospital. After Chile's return to democracy in 1990, she joined the Western Metropolitan Health Service as an epidemiologist and then the National AIDS Commission. She also was a consultant for the Pan-American Health Organization, the World Health Organization, and the German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ).
In 1994, Bachelet worked as an advisor to the Ministry of Health on primary health care and health services management. Later, she participated in a course on military strategy at the National Academy of Political and Strategic Studies.
Mr. Boris Greguška
Chair of the UNFF14 Bureau, Chief State Counsellor, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Slovak Republic
Boris Greguška is a Chief State Counsellor at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development of the Slovak Republic.
In 2001, he started his career at the Forestry Department of the Ministry as a counsellor with main responsibility for forest statistics and economics. Since then, he has held several positions from an expert counsellor to a chief state counsellor with a main focus on international forest and forest-related policies. Since 2004, he has represented the Slovak Republic in a number of intergovernmental organisations and processes relevant to forests, including within the United Nations system and the European Union.
Since 2014, he has been co-chairing FOREST EUROPE, a high-level political process on forests in Europe, working to promote sustainable management of European forests.
From 2014 to 2017, he worked for the Slovak Permanent Representation to the European Union in Brussels. In a position of a second secretary he was responsible for forest-related matters. During the Slovak Presidency in 2016 and the Maltese Presidency in 2017 of the Council of the European Union, he held a position of a Chairman of the Working Party on Forestry in the Council of the European Union. In this position he led the European Union and its Member States in promoting the role of forests and their sustainable management in several global intergovernmental forums.
In May 2018, he was elected a Chair of the United Nations Forum on Forests Bureau for two-year term.
He started studying forestry at a secondary school when he was fourteen. Later he graduated from the Technical University in Zvolen where he obtained a Master of Science degree in forestry and a Philosophiae Doctor degree in forest economics.
Ms. Jayathma Wickramanayake
Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth
Ms. Jayathma Wickramanayake was appointed as the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth in June 2017 at the age of 26. She is the youngest senior official in the UN and the first woman to hold this position. In this role, Jayathma works to expand the UN’s youth engagement and advocacy efforts across all four pillars of work – sustainable development, human rights, peace and security and humanitarian action – and serves as a representative of and advisor to the Secretary-General.
In November 2019 Jayathma was recognized by Time Magazine in the list of “Time 100 Next: Rising stars shaping the future”
Originally from Sri Lanka, Ms. Wickramanayake has worked extensively on youth development and participation, and has played a key role in transforming the youth development sector in her home country.
Prior to taking up her post, Ms. Wickramanayake was instrumental in creating the movement for civic and political engagement of young people, especially young women in Sri Lanka named “Hashtag Generation”. Previously, she advocated for global youth development on an international level including as the first ever Sri Lankan Youth Delegate to the United Nations and as the youth lead negotiator and member of the International Youth Task Force of the World Conference on Youth 2014 where she played a critical role in mainstreaming youth in the Post-2015 Process and in the establishment of World Youth Skills Day.
Mr. Guy Ryder
Under-Secretary-General for Policy of the United Nations
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced on 7 October 2022 the appointment of Guy Ryder of the United Kingdom as Under-Secretary-General for Policy in his Executive Office. He will succeed Volker Türk of Austria who has been appointed as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Mr. Ryder was most recently Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Geneva after serving two successive terms since October 2012. He first joined the ILO in 1998 as Director of the Bureau for Workers’ Activities and from 1999, served as Director of the Office of the Director-General.
Mr. Ryder started his professional career in 1981 as an assistant at the International Department of the Trades Union Congress in London. From 1985, he held the position of Secretary of the Industry Trade Section of the International Federation of Commercial, Clerical, Professional and Technical Employees (FIET) in Geneva. In 1988, he became Assistant Director and – from 1993 - Director of the Geneva office of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). In 2002, he was appointed General Secretary of the ICFTU and was elected as the first General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) when it was created in 2006. He returned to the ILO in 2010 as Executive Director, responsible for international labour standards and fundamental principles and rights at work.
Mr. Ryder studied Social and Political Sciences at the University of Cambridge and Latin American Studies at the University of Liverpool. He speaks English, French and Spanish.
Statements
Statements
Remarks of Youth Envoy137.41 KB
