Ambassador Ivan Šimonović served as the UN Assistant-Secretary-General and Special Adviser of the Secretary-General on the Responsibility to Protect (prevention of atrocity crimes) from 2016 to 2018. From 2010 to 2016, he served as the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights. Before joining the United Nations, Mr. Šimonović held the position of Minister of Justice of Croatia, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. In 2002 he served as the President of the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Mr. Šimonović worked as a professor at the Faculty of Law at the University of Zagreb, senior visiting scholar at the Columbia University, New York, visiting professor at the Leeds University, UK and honorary professor at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. In an expert capacity, he has been a member of the Council of Europe’s Commission for Democracy through Law (Venice Commission) and the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), as well as the Agent of the Republic of Croatia before the United Nations International Court of Justice (ICJ). As of September 2019 he started his second mandate as Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the UN in New York.