Sigrid Kaag

Since 2018, Kaag has been serving on the joint World Bank/WHO Global Preparedness Monitoring Board (GPMB), co-chaired by Elhadj As Sy and Gro Harlem Brundtland. In 2019, she joined the World Economic Forum High-Level Group on Humanitarian Investing, co-chaired by Børge Brende, Kristalina Georgieva and Peter Maurer.

In early 2017, Kaag was considered by international media to be one of the candidates to succeed Helen Clark as Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and head of the United Nations Development Group; the post eventually went to Achim Steiner.

Since 26 October 2017, Kaag has been serving as Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation in the third government of Prime Minister Mark Rutte. After the resignation of Foreign Affairs Minister Halbe Zijlstra (VVD) on 13 February 2018, she was nominated ad interim to succeed him while conserving her other cabinet position. Sigrid Kaag was consequently the first female Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands.

From January 2015 until October 2017 she served as the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL). Prior to that she served as Under Secretary-General and Special Coordinator of the United Nations – Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (UN-OPCW) Joint Mission to eliminate the declared chemical weapons programme of the Syrian Arab Republic between October 2013 and September 2014. Until her mission in Syria she was employed as Assistant Secretary-General and Assistant Administrator and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy of the United Nations Development Programme.

By the end of her term, news media reported that Kaag was rumored to succeed Lakhdar Brahimi as UN Special Envoy to Syria. On 1 December 2014, the UN Secretary General Ban announced that Kaag would become the United Nations Special Coordinator for Lebanon (UNSCOL), succeeding Sir Derek Plumbly.

Between October 2013 and September 2014, Kaag was head of the joint Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations mission for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons.

On 13 October 2013 United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon nominated her to lead the joint Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons-United Nations mission for the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons. The United Nations Security Council was set to vote on her nomination three days after her nomination, on 16 October. She was then officially confirmed for the position. Kaag led a team of hundred experts who were responsible for ensuring the destruction of Syria's chemical weapons programme before 30 June 2014.

From 2007 to May 2010, Kaag was Regional Director for Middle East and North Africa for UNICEF in Amman. In May 2010 she was appointed Assistant Secretary-General and Assistant Administrator and Director of the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy of the United Nations Development Programme in New York. In this capacity, she was the deputy to Helen Clark and oversaw UNDP’s strategic external engagement, organization-wide communication and advocacy as well as resource mobilization.

Kaag started working for the United Nations in 1994 and first served as Senior United Nations Adviser in the Office of the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Khartoum, Sudan. From 1998 to 2004 she was Chief of Donor Relations for the International Organization for Migration, and Senior Programme Manager with the External Relations Office of UNRWA in Jerusalem. Working in the Middle East she was responsible for areas as the occupied Palestinian territories, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

A diplomat by occupation, Kaag worked as a civil servant for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1990 until 1993 when she became a United Nations official for the UNRWA in Jerusalem from 1994 until 1997. Kaag worked as a administrator at the International Organization for Migration in Geneva from 1998 until 2004 when she became a senior advisor of the United Nations for Khartoum and Nairobi until 2005 when she became a senior official at UNICEF. Kaag served as Regional Director for Middle East and North Africa for UNICEF in Amman from 2007 until May 2010 when she was appointed Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Bureau of External Relations of the UNDP in New York. She oversaw UNDP’s strategic external engagement, organization-wide communication and advocacy as well as resource mobilization.

Kaag is married with four children. Her husband, Anis al-Qaq, is Palestinian, a deputy minister under Yasser Arafat in the 1990s, and used to be the Palestinian representative to Switzerland. She speaks six languages: Dutch, English, French, Spanish, German and Arabic. She has been the first Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General featured in the Vogue fashion and lifestyle magazine.

Sigrid Agnes Maria Kaag (born 2 November 1961) is a Dutch politician and diplomat of the Democrats 66 (D66) party. She is the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation in the Cabinet Rutte III since 26 October 2017.

Kaag was born in 1961, in Rijswijk, as the daughter of a classical pianist. She grew up in Zeist and initially studied Arabic Linguistics and Philology at the Leiden University, but switched her study to The American University in Cairo where she obtained a B.A. degree in Middle East Studies in 1985. She subsequently earned an M.Phil. degree in International Relations from St Antony's College, University of Oxford in 1987, and an M.A. degree in Politics and Economics of the Middle East from the University of Exeter in 1988. She also received foreign relations training at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, and studied at the French École nationale d'administration (ENA).