María Emma Mejía Vélez
| María Emma Mejía Vélez | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations | |
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Assumed office 18 February 2014 |
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| Preceded by | Néstor Osorio |
| Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR) | |
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In office 9 May 2011 – 11 June 2012 |
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| Preceded by | Néstor Kirchner |
| Succeeded by | Alí Rodríguez Araque |
| Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia | |
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In office July 1996 – 25 March 1998 |
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| President | Ernesto Samper Pizano |
| Preceded by | Rodrigo Pardo García-Peña |
| Succeeded by | Camilo Reyes Rodríguez |
| Minister of National Education of Colombia | |
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In office July 1995 – July 1996 |
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| President | Ernesto Samper Pizano |
| Preceded by | Arturo Sarabia Bette |
| Succeeded by | Olga Duque de Ospina |
| Colombia Ambassador to Spain | |
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In office 1993–1995 |
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| President | César Gaviria Trujillo |
| Preceded by | Ernesto Samper Pizano |
| Succeeded by | Humberto de la Calle Lombana |
María Emma Mejía Vélez (born 27 September 1953) is a Colombian politician, diplomat, and journalist. She is currently the Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations in New York. For more than two decades she has held high government positions, dedicating most of her career to peace and Latin-American foreign affairs issues.
She served as Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations -UNASUR, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Education, and Ambassador of Colombia to Spain. She has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Advisory Commission of Colombia since 1999.
Ambassador Mejía also ran for Vice-President and Mayor of Bogotá.
After graduating from Universidad del Valle and Pontificia Universidad Javeriana as a journalist, she enrolled in cinematography and television studies at the BBC in London, where she later worked in the Latin American Radio Broadcast Service.
Her first public post was as the Director the Cinematographic Company (FOCINE) where she successfully achieved greater State support for the Colombian film industry.
In 1990, former President Cesar Gaviria named her as the Head of the Presidential Advisory Office for Medellín, where she gained national recognition for her social work in the most violent territories under the control of the drug cartel of Medellín.
In 1993, Ambassador Mejía became the first woman to be the Ambassador of Colombia to Spain. In 1995, as the Minister of Education, she designed and implemented the first Colombian Ten-Year Education Plan and issued the Manual of the Child written by the Nobel Prize- winning Gabriel García Marquez.
As Minister of Foreign Affairs from1996 to1998, Ambassador Mejía was also the first woman to be designated as the Minister in Charge of the duties of the Office of the President.
In 1999 she took part in the peace process with FARC and in the special commission for the ELN guerrilla groups.
From 2003 to 2011, she worked as Executive President of Pies Descalzos Foundation, a charity founded by the Colombian singer Shakira and was part of its Board of Director until 2014.
In 2011, she was appointed Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations –UNASUR, where she led institutional strengthening through the creation of twelve sectorial committees to address the most relevant issues among the States.
Ambassador Mejía served as Chief of the OAS Electoral Observation Mission in Paraguay in 2009 and Costa Rica in 2010.
In the United Nations she has been Vice- President of the Economic and Social Council -ECOSOC- , one of the vice-presidents of the 70th session of the General Assembly and currently the Chairperson of the 71st session of the Third Committee on Social, Humanitarian and Cultural affairs.
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