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Ambassador Janez Lenarčič
Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights.
Ambassador Janez Lenarčič (Slovenia) has served as ODIHR director since July 2008. Before joining the Office, he served as the Slovenian Ambassador to the OSCE, from 2003 to 2006. In 2005, when Slovenia held the OSCE Chairmanship, he chaired the Permanent Council in Vienna, the Organization's regular political decision-making body. In 2006, he was appointed Slovenia’s State Secretary for European Affairs, and later went on to serve as Diplomatic Adviser in the office of the Prime Minister and in the Permanent Mission of Slovenia to the UN, in New York. Born in Ljubljana in 1967, Lenarčič holds a degree in international law from Ljubljana University.