Zeid bin Ra'ad

For his father, see Ra'ad bin Zeid.

Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad al-Hussein زید ابن رعد الحسين
Zeid in 2019
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
In office 1 September 2014 – 31 August 2018
Deputy	Kate Gilmore
Secretary General	Ban Ki-moon
Preceded by	Navi Pillay
Succeeded by	Michelle Bachelet
Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations
In office September 2010 – 22 July 2014
Monarch	Abdullah II
Preceded by	Mohammed Al-Allaf
Succeeded by	Dina Kawar
In office 7 August 2000 – 2 January 2007
Preceded by	Hassan Abu Nimeh
Succeeded by	Mohammed Al-Allaf
Ambassador of Jordan to the United States
In office 22 January 2007 – 27 February 2010
Monarch	Abdullah II
Preceded by	Karim Kawar
Succeeded by	Alia Hatough Bouran
President of the Assembly of States Parties of the International Criminal Court
In office 2002–2004
Appointed by	Assembly of States Parties
Succeeded by	Bruno Stagno Ugarte
Personal details
Born	(1964-01-26) 26 January 1964 Amman, Jordan
Spouse	Sarah Butler ​ (m. 2000)​
Children	3
Parent(s)	Ra'ad bin Zeid (father) Majda Lind (mother)
Education	Johns Hopkins University (BA) Christ's College, Cambridge (PhD)
House	Hashemite

Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad bin Zeid al-Hussein (Arabic: زيد ابن رعد الحسين; born 26 January 1964) is a Jordanian former diplomat who is the Perry World House Professor of the Practice of Law and Human Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the president and CEO of the International Peace Institute. He also served as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 2014 to 2018. He played a central role in the establishment of the International Criminal Court, and was elected the first president of the Assembly of State Parties of the International Criminal Court in September 2002. He also served as a political affairs officer in UNPROFOR in the former Yugoslavia from 1994 to 1996. A career diplomat, he served as Jordan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 2000 until 2007, when he was appointed as Jordan's Ambassador to the United States and non-resident Ambassador to Mexico. He was re-appointed Permanent Representative in 2010 and served until 2014, resigning shortly before his selection as High Commissioner. In 2019, Zeid was invited to join The Elders, an independent group of global leaders working for peace, justice and human rights founded by Nelson Mandela. He is the son of Prince Ra'ad bin Zeid, Lord Chamberlain of Jordan, and Swedish-born Margaretha Inga Elisabeth Lind, subsequently known as Majda Raad. As the United Nations does not permit the use of royal or other titles by its officials in the context of their official work, he was known as Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein in his capacity as United Nations High Commissioner. He is the apparent first in line to the thrones of the defunct Kingdom of Iraq and Arab Kingdom of Syria according to the mainstream claim.

Education and early life

Zeid was born in Amman, Jordan. He was educated in England at Reed's School, Surrey, then in the United States at Johns Hopkins University, where he was a member of the university's rugby club and graduated with a B.A. in 1987. He was then a research student at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he gained a PhD in 1993. In 2016, he was made an Honorary Fellow of Christ's College, Cambridge. Zeid received a commission as an officer in the Jordanian desert police (the successor to the Arab Legion) in 1989 and saw service with it until 1994. He then spent two years as a political officer in UNPROFOR, the UN force in the former Yugoslavia.

Diplomatic career

Zeid served as Jordan's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1996 to 2000. In August 2000 he was appointed Permanent Representative at the United Nations, serving until 2007. In 2006, he was nominated by Jordan as a candidate for selection as the next United Nations Secretary-General. From 2007 to 2010 he was Jordan's Ambassador to the United States of America, then in 2010 returned to the UN as Jordan's Permanent Representative. In January 2014, Zeid became president of the United Nations Security Council and chaired the Security Council's 1533 and 1521 committees, with regard to two sanctions regimes: the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia. From 16 September 2010 to 7 March 2012, Zeid was the Chairman of the Country-Specific Configuration of the UN Peace Building Commission for Liberia. He also chaired the search committee for the selection of the second prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in 2011. With reference to the International Criminal Court, and from 1996 to 2010, he was:

• President of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (2002–2005).
• Chairman of the informal negotiations on the 'elements' of the individual offenses falling under the crimes of: Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity, and War Crimes (1999–2000).
• Chairman of the Working Group on the Crime of Aggression at the Review Conference of the Rome Statute in Kampala (June 2010).

Whilst at the UN, he further chaired the Consultative Committee for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) from 2004 to 2007, and, in 2004, was named Advisor to the Secretary-General on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping. During his two-year tenure, he issued a report on eliminating such abuse from all peacekeeping operations, which became known as the 'Zeid Report'. He delivered the Grotius Lecture at the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law in April 2008, entitled For Love of Country and International Criminal Law. He was also a member of the World Bank's Advisory Council for the World Development Report 2011 and the International Advisory Board of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.

Accusations of domestic policy intervention as HCHR

As Commissioner, the remit of Zeid's position includes the right to criticise those nations’ governments who are monitored and found to abuse human rights. Since these statements concern domestic policy issues of UN member-states, frequent arguments against criticism is that the censure of individual states are close to impinging on state sovereignty. In June 2016, he opined on the United Kingdom's referendum vote on whether to leave the European Union, the so-called Brexit process. Zeid urged UK authorities to take care to prevent xenophobic attacks in the wake of the vote. In September, the OHCHR was reported as having tweeted angrily against "free market fundamentalism", in the context of Zeid tirades against European and American "populists". Calling Nigel Farage and Donald Trump "demagogues", the Commissioner published attacks on the right-wing politicians in OHCHR's website. On 12 September 2016, Zeid expressed concern over the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in the United States, whom he described as a "bigot", saying that: "If Donald Trump is elected on the basis of what he has said already ... I think it is without any doubt that he would be dangerous from an international point of view." Zeid said he was "not keen or intent on interfering in any political campaign within any particular country", adding the caveat that when an election could result in an increase in the use of torture (especially waterboarding) "or the focus on vulnerable communities in a way that suggests that they may well be deprived of their human rights, then I think it is incumbent to say so". These attacks on the candidacy of Trump prompted complaints from the Russian government to the UN, with Vitaly Churkin (Russia's Ambassador to the UN) saying: "Prince Zeid is overstepping his limits from time to time and we’re unhappy about it. He criticized a number of heads of state, government. He should stick to his file, which is important enough." Zeid was condemned by Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte in December 2016 for suggesting an investigation into Duterte's own accounts of extrajudicial killings when he was still Mayor of Davao City and on the "shocking" deaths linked to the Philippine Drug War. Duterte spokesperson Harry Roque responded by saying "Perhaps, the UN High Commissioner's language is because of the fact that they do not have democracy in his home state of Jordan. Jordan's leader is not elected unlike our president. By the time he ended his service as High Commissioner, one journalist reported that because Zeid was famously blunt and spared no one, his speeches and statements were eagerly awaited by the Geneva press corps. This endeared him to human rights activists worldwide.

Honours and awards

On 27 May 2020, Zeid Raad Al Hussein was invited to and gave special remarks at his alma mater Johns Hopkins University's 2020 Commencement ceremony. Other notable guest speakers during the virtual ceremony included Reddit co-founder and Commencement speaker Alexis Ohanian; philanthropist and former New York City Mayor, Michael Bloomberg; Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force; and senior class president Pavan Patel.

Personal life

HH Prince Zeid is the son of Prince Ra'ad bin Zeid, Lord Chamberlain of Jordan. His paternal grandmother was the Turkish painter Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid who was married to Prince Zeid bin Hussein. Zeid was married on 5 July 2000 in Amman to Sarah Butler, known as Princess Sarah Zeid after her marriage, who was born in Houston, Texas, on 1 August 1972. She is the daughter of Dr Godfrey Butler, a British geologist and a consultant to international oil companies, and Jean H. Butler. Zeid's younger brother, Mired bin Ra'ad, is the Chairman of the National Commission for Demining and Rehabilitation of Jordan, and Special Envoy of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction, or Ottawa Treaty, which seeks to eliminate the use of landmines.

External links

• Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
• The Washington Diplomat newspaper - Ambassador profile
• Appearances on C-SPAN