In 2003, Mohamed Ibn Chambas took on a role that remains a career high point: serving as a mediator to help forge the Accra Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the Liberian Civil War.
“It is a thing of pride that two decades on, the UN has closed its peacekeeping mission in the country, and the agreement still holds,” said Chambas, who spent decades as a Ghanaian lawyer, politician and diplomat, often focused on preventing or ending conflicts in several countries.
Through the years, Chambas served as Ghana’s deputy foreign secretary, deputy minister of education and deputy speaker of Parliament. He also was president of the Economic Community of West African States, and the United Nations Secretary General’s special representative for West Africa and the Sahel.
Though Chambas retired in 2021 from the UN, he serves the African Union as high representative for Silencing the Guns, an initiative to achieve peace and security in Africa.
“Even in my retirement,” Chambas said, “I continue to make myself available to my country, the West Africa subregion and our beloved continent of Africa.”
This piece, written by Steve Neumann, originally appeared in the Fall 2023 issue of Think Magazine.