Prince Zeid bin Ra'ad

Education and early life

Zeid was born in Amman, Jordan. He was educated at Reed's School, Surrey, in England, then at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, where he was a prominent member of the university's rugby club and graduated B.A. in 1987. He was then a research student at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he gained a PhD in 1993.

In 1989 Prince Zeid received his commission as an officer in the Jordanian desert police (the successor to the Arab Legion), and saw service with them until 1994. He then spent two years as a political officer in UNPROFOR, the UN force in the Former Yugoslavia.

Diplomatic career

Zeid served as Jordan's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations from 1996 to 2000. In August 2000 he was appointed Permanent Representative at the United Nations, serving until 2007. In 2006 he was nominated by Jordan as a candidate for selection as the next United Nations Secretary-General. From 2007 to 2010 he was Jordan's Ambassador to the United States of America, then in 2010 returned to the UN as Jordan's Permanent Representative.

In January 2014 Zeid was appointed as president of the United Nations Security Council and chaired the Security Council's 1533 and 1521 committees, with regard to two sanctions regimes: the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Liberia.

From 16 September 2010 to 7 March 2012, Zeid was the Chairman of the Country-Specific Configuration of the UN Peace Building Commission for Liberia. He also chaired the search committee for the selection of the second prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in 2011.

With reference to the International Criminal Court, and from 1996 to 2010, he was:

While at the UN, he further chaired the Consultative Committee for the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) from 2004–2007, and, in 2004, was named Advisor to the Secretary-General on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in UN Peacekeeping. During his two-year tenure, he issued a ground-breaking report on eliminating such abuse from all peacekeeping operations, which became known as the 'Zeid Report'.

Zeid delivered the Grotius Lecture at the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Society of International Law in April 2008 entitled: 'For Love of Country and International Criminal Law'. Prince Zeid was a member of the Advisory Committee to the Institute for Historical Justice and Reconciliation. He was also a member of the World Bank's Advisory Council for the World Development Report 2011 and the International Advisory Board of the Auschwitz Institute for Peace and Reconciliation.

On June 6, 2014, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon proposed that Prince Zeid replace Navi Pillay as the United Nations' human rights chief based in Geneva. The nomination, which was subsequently approved by the 193-nation U.N. General Assembly, made him the first Muslim to lead the UN Human Rights Office. Full texts of all his statements are available at the website of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. In that capacity he has stated, "There is no justification ever, for the degrading, the debasing or the exploitation of other human beings – on whatever basis: nationality, race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, age or caste."

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights

On 8 September 2014, in his maiden speech to the UN's 47-member council at the body's 27th session in Geneva, Zeid strongly criticized the so-called Islamic State group, saying it was trying to create a "house of blood". He called on the international community to combat the spread of the movement in Iraq and Syria, asking, "[Do] they believe they (ISIS) are acting courageously, barbarically slaughtering captives?" The massacres, beheadings, rape and torture "reveal only what a Takfiri (ie. 'excommunicator' in Arabic) state would look like, should this movement actually try to govern in the future", he said. "It would be a harsh, mean-spirited house of blood, where no shade would be offered, nor shelter given to any non-Takfiri in their midst". In a speech at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Commissioner said that lessons from the Holocaust provide a key to understanding ISIS. He said: "If we have learned anything from our collective history, it is this: Scrambling only for ourselves, our people, our political or religious ideology, or for our own kind will only scramble it all — eventually, sometimes horrifyingly so — for everyone." According to press accounts, he said "The solution he proposed for avoiding atrocities such as the Holocaust was human rights education for every child in the world, beginning before the age of nine. 'In this way, from Catholic parochial schools to the most secular public institutions, and indeed Islamic madrassahs, children could learn — even in kindergarten — and experience the fundamental human rights values of equality, justice and respect.'"

The newly appointed Commissioner also focused on other troubled areas of the world, including Venezuela, Ukraine and Gaza. His press statements are available on the website of his office.

He has reported to the Security Council on Iraq and other countries, and spoken of the need for greater moral courage to ensure equality and human rights for all: "Children need to learn what bigotry and chauvinism are, and the evil they can produce. They need to learn that blind obedience can be exploited by authority figures for wicked ends. They should also learn that they are not exceptional because of where they were born, how they look, what passport they carry, or the social class, caste or creed of their parents; they should learn that no-one is intrinsically superior to her or his fellow human beings ... Sadly, they must learn that the Zeppelin Field, the shadow of Buchenwald, the glint of the machete and the horror of life today in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan, Central African Republic and elsewhere – wherever we live, they are never that far away."

He said that the United States had an obligation under international law to prosecute all those responsible for CIA torture, from those who carried out interrogations to policy makers and higher-ups who gave the orders.

On 17 April 2015, Prince Zeid placed the field operations director at the OHCHR, Anders Kompass, under administrative leave after Kompass provided French authorities with an internal UN report detailing sexual abuse of children by French UN peacekeeping troops in the Central African Republic. The decision was reversed on 5 May 2015 after being found "prima facie unlawful" by the United Nations Dispute Tribunal.

On 27 April of that year, Mr Hussein criticized a column in The Sun written by Katie Hopkins for using the term "cockroaches" to refer to migrants, describing it as akin to propaganda used by the Nazis and the perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide against their victims.

In September 2015, Prince Zeid criticized Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. His report has implied that the Saudi-led military coalition may be guilty of war crimes. In October 2016, he said: "The Human Rights Council’s inability to take decisive action by setting up an international investigation is contributing to a climate of impunity, and violations continue to occur on a regular basis. Such outrageous attacks cannot be allowed to continue."

On 17 August 2016, Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein expressed deep regret at the failure of UN Human Rights Office to gain access to Kashmir, despite allegations of state sponsorship of violence and the almost daily reports of violence in the region.

Accusations of overstepping political bounds as HCHR

As Commissioner, Zeid has chosen to involve himself in domestic policy issues of UN member-states which many have considered unnecessary as politically unwise and borderline impinging on state sovereignty.

Note: the remit of his position includes the right to criticise those nation's governments who abuse human rights. The UNHRC monitors individual states and so it makes sense that they censure individual states. The above should be edited to clarify this, at the moment this section is clearly written from the point of view of someone with political motivations.

In June of 2016, the Prince opined on the United Kingdom's referendum vote on whether to leave the European Union, the so-called Brexit process. Zeid urged UK authorities to take care to prevent xenophobic attacks in the wake of the vote.

In September, the OHCHR was reported having tweeted angrily against "free market fundamentalism", in the context of Zeid tirades against European and American "populists". Calling Nigel Farage and Donald Trump "demagogues", the Commissioner published attacks on the right-wing politicians in OHCHR's website.

On 12 September 2016, Mr Hussein expressed concern over the presidential candidacy of Donald Trump in the United States, whom he has described as a bigot, saying that: "If Donald Trump is elected on the basis of what he has said already ... I think it is without any doubt that he would be dangerous from an international point of view." Mr Hussein said he was "not keen or intent on interfering in any political campaign within any particular country", adding the caveat that when an election could result in an increase in the use of torture (especially waterboarding) "or the focus on vulnerable communities in a way that suggests that they may well be deprived of their human rights, then I think it is incumbent to say so". These attacks on the candidacy of Trump prompted complaints from the Russian government to the UN, with Vitaly Churkin (Russia's ambassador to the UN) saying: "Prince Zeid is overstepping his limits from time to time and we’re unhappy about it. He criticized a number of heads of state, government. He should stick to his file, which is important enough."

Zeid also drew the ire of Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte in December 2016, criticising the Philippines' human rights record in its renewed emphasis on drug trafficking, the Philippine Drug War.

Personal life

Zeid is the son of Prince Ra'ad bin Zeid, Lord Chamberlain of Jordan. His paternal grandmother was the renowned Turkish painter Princess Fahrelnissa Zeid who was married to Prince Zeid bin Hussein.

Prince Zeid was married on the 5 July 2000 in Amman to Sarah Butler, known as Princess Sarah Zeid after her marriage, who was born in Houston, Texas, on 1 August 1972. She was educated at Prior's Field, Hurtwood House in Surrey, and has a BA in International Relations from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas and an MSC in Development Studies from SOAS, University of London. She was then employed with the United Nations Organization in New York City, where she served in the development program, the peace-keeping department and UNICEF. She is the daughter of Dr Godfrey Butler, a British geologist and a consultant to international oil companies, and Jean H. Butler.