Mauritanian diplomat Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed was elected secretary general of the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation on Thursday, succeeding Hussein Ibrahim Taha of Chad as head of the 57-member organisation.
Foreign ministers from OIC member states elected Mr Ahmed during a meeting in Jeddah.
Mr Ahmed, 65, spent more than three decades working with the UN and the Mauritanian government.
He served as Mauritania's foreign minister from 2018 to 2022. Before entering government, he held a series of senior UN positions in Africa and the Middle East, including resident co-ordinator, and humanitarian co-ordinator in Syria and Yemen.
In 2014, he was appointed deputy special representative of the UN secretary general, and deputy head of the UN Support Mission in Libya. He later served as the UN's special representative for the Ebola emergency response in West Africa.
In 2015, Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General at the time, appointed him special envoy for Yemen, succeeding Jamal Benomar. Mr Ahmed led UN-backed efforts to bring Yemen's warring parties to the negotiating table, notably at peace talks in Switzerland and Kuwait.
His experience in some of the Middle East's most protracted conflicts is expected to shape his role at the OIC, which represents 57 Muslim-minority countries across four continents.
Mr Ahmed was born in Nouakchott, Mauritania in 1960. He holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Montpellier in France and a master's degree in human resources development from the University of Manchester in Britain. He also studied economics and social policy analysis at Maastricht Graduate School of Governance in the Netherlands.
Mauritania put forward his candidacy earlier this year and mounted a diplomatic campaign to win backing from OIC member states.
