Biography

A life in the service of humanity

For over four decades, Olara Otunnu has held diverse leadership positions in which he has demonstrated statesmanship, vision, diplomatic ingenuity and moral voice. He is widely acclaimed for his talent in consensus-building and for developing innovative solutions in situations of deadlock or crisis. The breadth and depth of his experience is rare.

A national of Uganda, he has also lived in the United States, France and the United Kingdom. The United States has recognised him as a person of “extraordinary ability and talent”, granting him the special O-1 status reserved for those who have “risen to the very top of their field of endeavor”.

He attended King's College Budo on the Queen's Scholarship - awarded to the top student in each of Uganda's four regions - and went on to Makerere University, to Oxford as an Overseas Scholar, and to Harvard as a Fulbright Scholar.

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Olara Otunnu

Chronology

From Makerere to the Security Council

  1. 1972–1973

    President of the Makerere University Students Guild and member of the University Council, leading student resistance to the Idi Amin regime.

  2. 1976–1980

    Secretary-General of the Uganda Freedom Union, the United States-based Ugandan opposition to the Amin regime.

  3. 1978–1981

    Assistant Professor of Law, Albany Law School, New York State; earlier, an associate at Chadbourne & Parke in New York City.

  4. 1979

    Delegate to the Moshi Unity Conference, the political conclave that preceded the campaign to remove Idi Amin from power; then member of Uganda's interim Parliament.

  5. 1980–1985

    Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Uganda to the United Nations; Chairman of the UN Commission on Human Rights; Vice-President of the General Assembly.

  6. December 1981

    President of the United Nations Security Council. He devised the straw-ballot system - the Otunnu Formula - breaking the deadlock over the election of the Secretary-General.

  7. 1985–1986

    Minister of Foreign Affairs of Uganda, carrying out a major reorganization of the Ministry around professionalism and merit.

  8. 1987–1989

    Visiting Professor at the American University in Paris and Visiting Fellow at the Institut Français des Relations Internationales.

  9. 1990–1998

    President of the International Peace Academy (now the International Peace Institute), the UN-affiliated think tank in New York.

  10. 1998–2005

    UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict - building one of the most ambitious human rights agendas ever undertaken.

  11. 2005–present

    World's Children's Ombudsman, selected by a worldwide network of millions of children; Patron of the World's Children's Prize.

  12. 2010–2015

    President of the Uganda People's Congress, the social democratic party that led Uganda to independence.

  13. 2023–present

    Co-Chair of Rocco Paco, a non-partisan, community-rooted movement for rebuilding, healing and restoration in post-war northern Uganda.

Reconciliation

Healing what war has broken

Mr Otunnu has long advocated a full process of truth-telling and acknowledgement leading to genuine national reconciliation in relation to the dark episodes of Uganda's post-colonial history. Since 2022 he has personally led a historic people-to-people reconciliation process between the Kakwa people - Idi Amin's community - and the Central Lwo people, his own.

With Chief Justice Emeritus Alfonse Chigamoy Owiny-Dollo he spearheads Rocco Paco, a non-political, community-rooted peacebuilding movement dedicated to rebuilding a society collapsed by more than twenty years of war and internment in camps. He is also Co-Chair of the St. Janani Luwum Memorial, in commemoration of the archbishop murdered by Idi Amin in 1977.