Besiana Kadare


Besiana Kadare is an Albanian diplomat, and daughter of writers Helena Kadare and Ismail Kadare. She serves as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Representative of Albania to the United Nations, a Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly for its 75th session, and Albania's Ambassador to Cuba.

Early life and education

Kadare is the daughter of writers Helena Kadare and Ismail Kadare.
Kadare holds a master’s degree in modern and comparative literature, and a specialized high studies diploma in modern specialized literature from the Sorbonne Paris-IV University in Paris, France.

Career

Early years

Kadare served as First Secretary at Albania’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York from 2002-05. She returned to Albania in 2005 to work with the United States Agency for International Development.
In 2008, Kadare served in Albania’s Embassy in France. Between 2011 and 2016, Kadare served as Albania’s Ambassador and Permanent Delegate to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris.

Permanent Representative of Albania to the United Nations

Kadare presented her credentials to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on June 30, 2016, and since then has been the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Permanent Representative of Albania to the United Nations in New York. She was appointed to serve concurrently as Albania's Ambassador to Cuba.
In October 2017, at a UN Security Council meeting, Kadare said that the meaningful inclusion of women in conflict prevention and peace processes remained negligible, with women being sidelined during peace negotiations even when they were present, as it was always men who led and decided when and how to make peace. She urged that Member States increase their commitment to fully integrate women in their peace and security agenda.
In 2018 Muslim-majority Albania co-hosted an event at the United Nations with Catholic-majority Italy and Jewish-majority Israel celebrating the translation of the Talmud into Italian for the first time. Ambassador Kadare opined: “Projects like the Babylonian Talmud Translation open a new lane in intercultural and interfaith dialogue, bringing hope and understanding among people, the right tools to counter prejudice, stereotypical thinking and discrimination. By doing so, we think that we strengthen our social traditions, peace, stability — and we also counter violent extremist tendencies.”
In January 2019 Kadare on behalf of Albania co-hosted together with the World Jewish Congress and the United Nations Department of Global Communications an event on the theme “A story of humanity: the rescue of Jews in Albania”. She delivered remarks at the United Nations at a briefing entitled “Holocaust Remembrance: Demand and Defend your Human Rights”, marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day and reflecting on the genocide of six million European Jews during World War Two, and the little-known record of Albanians during the Holocaust in Albania, which took in thousands of Jews who would otherwise have ended up in the Nazi death camps.
Kadare in December 2019 called the decision to award Austrian writer Peter Handke, widely regarded as a denier of genocide, the 2019 Nobel Prize in Literature “shameful,” saying it should forever haunt the Nobel Foundation.

Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly

In June 2020 Kadare was voted a Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly for its 75th session.

Other activities