Christoph Heusgen

He served at the German Embassy in Paris until 1988, before returning to the Federal Foreign Office headquarters in Bonn, where he took on the role of Private Secretary to the Coordinator for German-French Relations Rainer Barzel from 1988 to 1990.

[12] Heusgen was later appointed Director of the Policy Unit of the High Representative Javier Solana in the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union in Brussels from 1999 to 2005.

[16] During his time as chair of the Security Council, Heusgen notably led negotiations in July 2020 on extending aid deliveries to Syria for one year.

At the time, he told his Chinese and Russian counterparts to report to their capitals that he had asked, "How those people who gave the instructions to cut off the aid of 500,000 children... are ready to look into the mirror tomorrow.

"[17] In a programmatic announcement 2018, Heusgen criticized the Trump administration's withdrawal from multilateral formats and its increasingly-unilateral approach, which created "noticeable uncertainty in the UN system.

[20] Heusgen used his last scheduled UN Security Council session, whose official agenda topic was Iran, to call again on China to release Kovrig and the consultant Michael Spavor, who had likewise been detained in 2018.

[24] In October 2023 Christoph Heusgen expressed concern that an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza could further worsen the humanitarian and political situation.

[36] During his time at the Chancellery, he regularly invited foreign ambassadors to the Neuss Schützenfest in his hometown, including Phil Murphy in 2012,[37] Simon McDonald in 2014,[38] Philippe Étienne in 2015 and John B. Emerson in 2016.

[39] In 2017, the German tabloid Bild spread leaked information from Russian hacker group Fancy Bear, believed to be linked to Russian intelligence agency GRU, who had hacked into the United Nations' email system and obtained Heusgen's correspondences, including one which suggested that he helped his wife get a job at the UN.

[46] This accusation was refuted by the Chancellor Angela Merkel in her reply to the Bundestag as well by several members of the German Government, including Andreas Michaelis, then State Secretary at the Federal Foreign Office.