17 Facts About Bert Koenders

Bert Koenders is currently a professor at Leiden University and a special envoy of the World Bank.

Bert Koenders is chair of the Dutch Advisory Council on International Affairs, a member of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group and a commissioner of the International Commission on Missing Persons.

Bert Koenders was a member of the House of Representatives from 1997 to 2007 and served as Minister for Development Cooperation from 2007 until 2010.

Bert Koenders later was the UN Secretary-General's Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Operation in the Ivory Coast, and Special Representative and Head of the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali.

Albert Gerard Koenders was born on 28 May 1958 in Arnhem in Gelderland, where he grew up in a Reformed environment.

Bert Koenders attended the secondary school Carolus Clusius College in Zwolle, where he completed the pre-university program.

Bert Koenders studied political science at the Free University Amsterdam and political and social sciences at the University of Amsterdam.

Bert Koenders received his Master of Arts degree from Johns Hopkins University, where he studied at the School of Advanced International Studies in Bologna and Washington from 1979 to 1981.

Bert Koenders was adjunct professor at Webster University in Leiden from 1987 to 1993.

From 1983 to 1993, Bert Koenders worked as an aide for the Labour Party in the House of Representatives.

Bert Koenders served as an adviser to the United Nations Operation in Mozambique in the early 1990s, his first job outside the Netherlands.

Bert Koenders was a member of the House of Representatives from 1997 until 2007.

Bert Koenders was member of the permanent parliamentary committees on foreign affairs and on defense.

Bert Koenders was minister without portfolio for Development Cooperation in the Fourth Balkenende cabinet sworn in on 22 February 2007.

Bert Koenders came under political fire as minister in July 2007, after it became known that an event sponsored by the Ministry, Het akkoord van Schokland, was organized without a public procurement process stipulated under European Union law.

Between 2008 and 2009, Koenders was part of a High-Level Taskforce on Innovative International Financing for Health Systems, which had been launched to help strengthen health systems in the 49 poorest countries in the world and was chaired by UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and World Bank president Robert Zoellick.

On 17 October 2014, Bert Koenders succeeded Frans Timmermans as Minister of Foreign Affairs.