A diplomat of the multilateral age

Dr. David F. Puyana is the Ambassador and Permanent Observer of the United Nations-mandated University for Peace (UPEACE) to the United Nations Office at Geneva and Vienna, and to the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. He chairs the Geneva Multilateral Center, a diplomatic initiative led by the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law and UPEACE Geneva. He cooperates with the Foundation Peace without Borders, the Geneva Institute for Leadership & Public Policy, and the Instituto Diplomático Doctor José Gustavo Guerrero of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador, and is co-founder of the UNESCO Chair on Peace, Solidarity and Intercultural Dialogue at the University Abat Oliba CEU (Spain).

From 2015 to 2017 he was appointed by the Director-General of UNESCO to coordinate a landmark “Peace Research,” in which thirty-two UN Funds, Programmes and Specialized Agencies analysed the multidimensional notion of peace within the International Decade for the Rapprochement of Cultures (2013–2022). He served as adviser at the UNESCO Liaison Office in Geneva.

He served as legal and diplomatic adviser at the Permanent Mission of Costa Rica to the United Nations in Geneva, assisting the Chairperson-Rapporteur of the UN Intergovernmental Open-Ended Working Group on the Right to Peace (2013–2015). He was one of the architects of the Declaration on the Right to Peace, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2016 — the first legal peace instrument adopted by the United Nations in the twenty-first century.

His engagement with civil society spans 2006 to 2013 with Religions for Peace, Finn Church Aid, UNESCO Etxea and the International Association of Peace Messenger Cities, as well as service in the Human Rights Office of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Spain. He conducts second-track diplomacy worldwide, including a long-standing inter-faith dialogue, is part of European Union mechanisms confronting anti-Muslim hatred and antisemitism, and is a member of the Board of Governors of the Shimon Peres Center for Peace and Innovation.