UN, NEW YORK CITY: Saudi Arabia’s new permanent representative to the UN, Abdulaziz Al-Wasil, has presented his credentials to Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

Al-Wasil replaces former ambassador Abdullah Al-Mouallimi, who completed an 11-year tenure as the Kingdom’s top envoy.

During Al-Wasil’s meeting with Guterres, the ambassador wished the UN chief continued success during his second term in office. They discussed the close partnership between the Kingdom and the UN, and ways to enhance the relationship.

Al-Wasil joined the diplomatic corps in 1999, and served in the international organizations department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Riyadh. Two years later, he moved to the Kingdom’s embassy in Canberra, Australia, where he assumed the role of charge d’affaires.

He returned to the Kingdom in 2007 to engage in multilateral work, focusing on human rights at the ministry’s office for multilateral relations, before moving to the Kingdom’s permanent mission in Geneva, where he also took on the human rights file for about five years. He has published many articles in multiple languages, mainly tackling human rights issues.

In 2013, he moved to London, UK, where he became deputy chief of mission at the Saudi embassy, before being appointed three years later as the Kingdom’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva.

Before joining the diplomatic corps, Al-Wasil held multiple positions in both the public and private sectors, including as a lecturer at King Abdulaziz Military College in Riyadh, and as an assistant lecturer in the political science department at Marshall University in the US.