Dr Alex Quaison-Sackey

Alex Quaison-Sackey, who today was elected President of the nineteenth session, of the General Assembly has' been the permanent Representative of Ghana at the United Nations and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary since 30 June 1959. He beaded the Ghana delegation to the fourteenth., thirteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and, eighteenth sessions of the General Assembly. He vas elected as one of the 13 Vice-Presidents of the sixteen session in 1961. While Ghana’s Representative on the Security Council, Mr. Quaison-Sackey, served as it President in June 1962 and again in July 1963 He vas elected as Chairman of the United Nations Committee on Information in -Non-Self-Governing Territories in 1960, and as second Vice-Chairman of the Governing Council of the United Nations Special Fund in 1961. In 1961, he also was a member of the United Nations Congo Conciliation Commission. Born in Winneba, Ghana (then the Gold Coast) on the 9th of August 1924, Mr. Quaison-Sackey attended the Mfanttsipim School at Cape Coast and continued his studies at Achimita College. In 1948, He was President of the Political Youth Organization in WInneba in the struggle for the Independence of Ghana. In England, he studied for an honours Degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Exeter College, Oxford, from 1949 to 1952. On his return from England, he was appointed Labour Officer in Ghana, 1952-54, and during this period, he lectured in Economics and Government for the Ghana People’s Education association. In 1954, he entered Lincoln's Inn and during that year he also represented his Government at the Cambridge Conference on-African Administration. Mr. Quaison-Sackey was one of the first Foreign Service Officers appointed before his country's independence, and undertook studies in international relations and in international law at the London School of Economics. In 1957, he was a member of the first Ghana delegation to the session of the Contracting Parties to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in Geneva. Subsequently, he served as Head of Chancery and Official secretary in the Ghana High Commissioner’s Office in London until 1959. He attended the Monrovia Foreign ministers Conference of Independent African States in 1959. During the same year, he was appointed Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and Permanent Representative of Ghana to the United Nations. In 1960., he attended the Second Regular Conference of Independent African States, held in Addis Ababa in June, as well as the Leopoldville Conference of Foreign Ministers in August. Mr. Quaison-Sackey was a member of the Ghana delegation to the Belgrade Conference of Non-Aligned Countries in 1961; to the Conferences of Heads of African States in Addis Ababa in 1963 and in Cairo in July 1964; and to the Cairo Conference of Non-Aligned Countries in October 1964. During the Cairo Conference of Non-Aligned Countries, he was Chairman of the Political Drafting Committee. He served as acting Chairman of the Ghana delegation to the United Nations on Trade and Development held in Geneva in 1964, and was for one week Chairman of the Co-ordinating Committee of the Group of African, Asian and Latin American countries at that Conference. In November 1964, he headed Ghana's delegation to the Conference on Peace-Keeping Forces., held in Ottawa., Canada. At United Nations Headquarters, he has served as Chairman of the African and the Asian-African Groups for several terms. He is Married and has five children. He is author of Africa Unbound, book published in My 1963. He has been Ghana's Ambassador to Cuba since 1961, and to Mexico from 1962 to march 1964.