Biography
Danilo Türk, is the former President of Slovenia, and the current President of Club de Madrid.
He studied law at the University of Ljubljana in 1975 and completed his PhD in 1982 with a thesis focusing on the principle of non-intervention in international law.
From 1983, Türk served as the Director of the Institute on International Law at the University of Ljubljana. He was also a member of the UN Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, where he served as the UN Special Rapporteur on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights from 1986 to 1992. During this time, Türk contributed to the drafting of Slovenia’s Constitution, particularly focusing on human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Between 1992 and 2000, Türk represented Slovenia as its first Permanent Representative to the UN in New York, including a stint on the UN Security Council in 1998 and 1999. Following this, he was appointed by Secretary-General Kofi Annan as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs from 2000 to 2005. Türk returned to Slovenia in 2005 to serve as Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Ljubljana before he was elected President in 2007.
Türk chaired the Global High-Level Panel on Water and Peace from 2015 to 2016, resulting in the publication of the “A Matter of Survival” report in 2017. He was also a candidate for the position of UN Secretary-General in 2016.
Since 2013, Türk has been a member of Club de Madrid and was elected as its President for the term 2020-2022 in October 2019. In 2022, he was appointed as one of the 12 Eminent individuals to the UN Secretary-General’s High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, tasked with providing concrete suggestions for enhancing multilateral arrangements on global issues outlined in “Our Common Agenda.”
