Marco Kalbusch, Dr. iur., lic.iur.can., Assessor, is the Secretary of the Conference on Disarmament and Deputy to the Director of the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, based in Geneva, Switzerland.

He holds a German and a Belgian law degree from the University of Passau and the Catholic University of Louvain, as well as a degree in canon law. He was awarded a doctoral degree in law from the Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg. Mr. Kalbusch is a permanent staff member of the United Nations Secretariat.

Before being appointed to UNREC, he was the Director of the United Nations Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa (UNREC), based in Lomé, Togo. He also served with OHCHR as a Human Rights Officer in different positions in Burundi, Somalia and as Deputy Regional Representative for Southern Africa, with the Department for Disarmament Affairs at United Nations Headquarters in New York and in UN peace operations in East Timor and the Democratic Republic of Congo. He has expertise in the areas of disarmament, mine action, security sector reform, human rights, international humanitarian law and transitional justice. Mr. Kalbusch was the legal advisor to the UN Commission of Inquiry on serious human rights violations in Côte d’Ivoire and part of the SADC legal team to support the implementation of the Madagascar roadmap.

Prior to joining the United Nations, Mr. Kalbusch worked with the European Commission. He did his legal clerkship at the Court of Appeal of Nuremberg, with secondments to the European Court of Justice and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, and lectured at the University of Passau.

Mr. Kalbusch, a German and Belgian national, is fluent in six languages (Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish).