Salome Zourabichvili is a Franco-Georgian politician and former diplomat who currently serves as the fifth President of Georgia, in office since December 2018.
34 Facts About Salome Zourabichvili
2.
Salome Zourabichvili is the first woman to be elected as Georgia's president, a position she will occupy for a term of six years.
3.
Salome Zourabichvili was born in Paris, France into a family of Georgian political refugees.
4.
Salome Zourabichvili joined the French diplomatic service in the 1970s and over three decades went on to occupy a variety of increasingly senior diplomatic positions.
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Salome Zourabichvili has served at the UN Security Council's Iran Sanctions Committee as the Coordinator of the Panel of Experts.
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Salome Zourabichvili ran in the 2018 Georgian presidential election as an independent candidate and prevailed in a run-off vote against the United National Movement nominee Grigol Vashadze.
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Salome Zourabichvili was born into a family of Georgian emigrants that fled to France following the 1921 Red Army invasion of the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
8.
Salome Zourabichvili's mother Zeinab Kedia was a daughter of Melkisedek Kedia, head of the Security Service of the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
9.
Salome Zourabichvili has one brother, Othar Zourabichvili, a doctor, writer and chairman of the AGF since 2006.
10.
Salome Nino Zourabichvili was born in Paris on 18 March 1952 and was raised within the Georgian community in France, settled between Paris and Leuville-sur-Orge since the 1921 fall of the Democratic Republic of Georgia.
11.
At the age of 17, Salome Zourabichvili received baccalaureat results that allowed her "the privilege of a direct admission in the terrible preparatory year" of the Paris Institute of Political Studies in September 1969, a program out of which only half of participants reach the Institute after a year.
12.
Salome Zourabichvili studied under a number of well-known French professors, such as historians Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, Louis Chevalier, her cousin Helene Carrere d'Encausse and the international lawyer Suzanne Bastid, the latter two being the only women teaching at Sciences Po.
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Salome Zourabichvili concentrated her studies on the Soviet world and graduated in July 1972.
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Salome Zourabichvili has said that choosing a career in diplomacy was linked with hopes to one day being instrumental in helping Georgia.
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Salome Zourabichvili returned to Sciences Po in 2006, this time as a professor shortly after her departure as Georgian Minister of Foreign Affairs.
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Salome Zourabichvili worked until 2014 at the Paris School of International Affairs, teaching the foreign policy of large powers, the post-Soviet world, the development of Eurasia since the fall of the USSR, and the causes for that fall.
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Salome Zourabichvili is the first student and professor of Sciences Po to become head of state.
18.
From her first marriage to Iranian-American World Bank economist Nicolas Gorjestani, Salome Zourabichvili has two children: Kethevane and Theimouraz.
19.
Besides French and Georgian, Salome Zourabichvili speaks fluent English and Italian.
20.
Salome Zourabichvili abandoned her studies to join the French diplomatic service in 1974.
21.
Salome Zourabichvili quickly became a career diplomat and was sent as Third Secretary to the French Embassy in Rome until 1977, under the ambassadorships of Charles Lucet and Francois Puaux, after which she became Second Secretary to the Permanent Mission of France to the UN until 1980.
22.
In 1992, Salome Zourabichvili was appointed First Secretary to the Permanent Mission of France to NATO in Brussels, before becoming Deputy Permanent Representative of France to the Western European Union, still in Brussels, from 1993 to 1996.
23.
Between 2003 and 2004, Salome Zourabichvili was Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of France to Georgia.
24.
Salome Zourabichvili became the first woman to be appointed to this post in Georgia on 18 March 2004.
25.
Salome Zourabichvili was the Coordinator of the Panel of Experts assisting the UN Security Council's Iran Sanctions Committee.
26.
Salome Zourabichvili was sacked by Prime Minister Zurab Nogaideli late on 19 October 2005 after a series of disputes with members of Parliament.
27.
Salome Zourabichvili had been heavily criticized by a number of Georgian ambassadors.
28.
Shortly before her dismissal was announced, Salome Zourabichvili resigned from the French foreign service, which had continued to pay her a salary while she was minister, and announced that she would remain in Georgia to go into politics.
29.
On 12 November 2010, Salome Zourabichvili announced her withdrawal from the leadership of Georgia's Way.
30.
Salome Zourabichvili remarked that both France under Macron and Germany under Scholz had shifted their stance which ante-dated the August 2008 Russo-Georgian War and now embraced expansionary policies.
31.
Salome Zourabichvili announced during the presidential campaign that, if elected, she would not work from the Avlabari Presidential Palace, opened in 2009 during the Presidency of Mikheil Saakashvili.
32.
Besides moving to the smaller residence, Salome Zourabichvili's office faced significant budget cutbacks.
33.
Salome Zourabichvili has organised a number of meetings and attended conferences aiming for the empowerment of women and young girls.
34.
In June 2022, Salome Zourabichvili condemned the homophobic protest by far-right groups in front of the EU delegation offices in Tbilisi.