Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, an advisory board member of NYU’s Center for Dialogues and the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations, has been elected president of the 66th session of the United Nations’ General Assembly.

Center for Dialogues Advisory Board Member Elected President of UN’s General Assembly
Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, an advisory board member of NYU’s Center for Dialogues and the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations, has been elected president of the 66th session of the United Nations’ General Assembly.

Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, an advisory board member of NYU’s Center for Dialogues and the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations, has been elected president of the 66th session of the United Nations’ General Assembly.

Al-Nasser pledged to focus on strengthening the Assembly’s role and its cooperation with the various United Nations organs and specialized agencies, as well as other international and regional organizations during his one-year term.

He also said he’d serve as a bridge among developed, developing, and least developed countries, and would focus on building consensus, especially on such issues as armed conflict, the rights of peoples to self-determination, hunger, poverty, terrorism, and climate change.

“I will not hesitate to help you overcome your differences over these issues,” Al-Nasser said, addressing the UN’s member states. “I will also expect you to shoulder your responsibilities as member states to address these challenges with responsibility and professionalism.”

The Center for Dialogues emerged from the tragedy of September 11th, which highlighted the need for greater communication among and about the United States, Europe, and the Muslim world. Dialogues was founded as a forum for constructive debate between the various religious, intellectual, economic, and political sectors of American, European, and Islamic societies. The Center for Dialogues is committed to a number of academic, policy, and outreach activities, including international conferences on a variety of topics of critical importance today—the clash of perceptions, elections, the nature of authority in the Islamic world and in the West, among others—which result in the development of policy recommendations.

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