Since 2011, Mr. Souren Georges Seraydarian is the chairman of the National Congress of Western Armenians (NCWA), an international NGO registered in Paris.
The NCWA addresses the rights and claims of the descendants of the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire.
He joined the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in 1969 and served in different capacities in the Division of Human Resources Management and became its Director in 1991 and thereafter as the Director of UNIDO in Geneva. In 1993 he joined the Department of Peace Keeping Operations of the United Nations in New York and served in several large scale peace keeping and peace building operations in Haiti, South Africa, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Liberia until end of 2004.He retired as Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations. Thereafter as a UN consultant, he carried out missions in Sudan, Haiti and Norway. His main assignments covered issues of management, Rule of Law, International Criminal justice, human rights, elections, police and civil affairs.
Souren was born in Aleppo, Syria and is a French citizen living in Austria and France.
He holds a PhD in International law from the University of Vienna and a diploma of the Diplomatic Academy. Post graduate courses include Human Resources Management at the Cranfield Institute of Technology in the UK and economic development at the College Economique et Sociale in Paris, France.
He is a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur of France.