Former ambassador and Italy's permanent representative to the UN, Francesco Paolo Fulci, will deliver a talk on The Reform Of The Security Council Of The United Nations: Why Still An Open Question?
The public lecture will be given at the Strickland Foundation's premises in Lija on May 2 at 6.45 p.m.
Born in Messina in 1931, the career diplomat is vice-president of Ferrero International, which comprises 20 factories and 19,000 employees worldwide. Ambassador Fulci entered the Italian foreign service in 1956 and was appointed to the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Rome, then to the Consulate General in New York and later to the embassies in Moscow, Paris, Tokyo and Ottawa.
He was also ambassador and permanent representative of Italy to Nato in Brussels and secretary general of the executive committee for Intelligence and Security Services in Rome, as well as the head of the Italian delegation to the Security Council of the UN, of which he served as president twice during his tenure as Italian ambassador to the UN, the longest in his country's history.
Ambassador Fulci was elected president of the Economic and Social Council of the UN after serving as its vice-president a year earlier, and was also elected to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
At the UN, he founded the so-called Coffee Club, a powerful lobby of countries formed in the early 1990s to oppose the expansion of the permanent membership of the Security Council and push for the enlargement of non-permanent seats.
The club was recently revived by Italy and Pakistan under the name of Uniting For Consensus to block a bid by Germany, India, Japan and Brazil to obtain a permanent seat in the Council.
Ambassador Fulci holds three doctorates Honoris Causa in law and a host of decorations and honorary citizenships and prizes.
He is Knight of the Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Italy and Knight of Honour and Devotion of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.
He graduated in law in 1953 from the and obtained a Master's degree in comparative law at Columbia University, New York, where he studied as a Fulbright scholar.
He holds a diploma from the Hague Academy of International Law and attended the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.