Doru Costea

Doru Costea (b. 1953) was with Romania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs between February 1990 and July 2017, where he was successively deputy-director for the Middle East and North Africa (1990-1991), head of the Policy Planning Group (1995-1997), director of Analysis and Information Coordination Department (2001-2003) and Secretary of State for Global Affairs (2009-2011).

He was Romania’s Ambassador to the State of Kuwait and the Sultanate of Oman (1991-1995), Egypt (1997-2001), UN and other international organizations in Geneva (2003-2009) and to China and Mongolia (2012-2017). While in Geneva, Costea was the first representative of an EU Member State to be elected President of the UN Human Rights Council (2007-2008).

He lectured, inter alia, at the American University – Cairo, the Harriman Institute for Russian, Eurasian and Eastern European Studies at Columbia University – New York, Tsinghua University, the Institute for International Studies, the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies with Renmin University, China Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing and at the Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou (Canton). Costea is a guest lecturer of the Romanian Diplomatic Institute and was a panelist and moderator at several editions of the Bucharest Forum organized by the Aspen Institute Romania and the German Marshall Fund, as well as the Doha Forum and the Atlantic Dialogues of the Policy Center for the New South (Marrakesh, Morocco); likewise, he was speaker at meetings of the China Strategy Group with European Center on Foreign Relations.

Costea is fluent in Arabic, English and French and has a Ph.D. in political science (2009) with the National School of Political and Administrative Studies, Bucharest, on democracy building in the Middle East.