Vuk Jeremić

Vuk Jeremić (Serbian Cyrillic: Вук Јеремић, pronounced [ʋûːk jěremitɕ]; born 3 July 1975) is a Serbian politician and diplomat who served as the president of the United Nations General Assembly from 2012 to 2013 and as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Serbia from 2007 to 2012.

In the early 1990s, Jeremić and his parents were forced to leave Yugoslavia after falling out with the country's communist government. Jeremić graduated from the University of Cambridge and Harvard University in 1998 and 2003, respectively, and was active in several pro-democracy student movements during the 1990s. In the early 2000s, he joined what The New York Times deemed Serbia's "most westward-leaning government" as an advisor to President Boris Tadić. In May 2007, Jeremić was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs. During his tenure, he spearheaded Serbia's fervent opposition to Kosovo's unilateral secession, the Serbian authorities arrested several war crimes suspects and extradited them to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, and there was a significant improvement in relations between Serbia and the West. In 2009, the European Union lifted all visa restrictions on citizens of Serbia, and in 2012, declared the country a candidate for membership.

Jeremić is the youngest person ever to have served as President of the United Nations General Assembly. His tenure saw Palestine granted non-member observer status in the General Assembly, the General Assembly's adoption of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT), which aimed to regulate international conventional weapons commerce, and the proclamation of 6 April as the International Day of Sport for Development and Peace. Jeremić describes himself as a "fervent, pro-European politician". He is the current president of the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development (CIRSD) and editor-in-chief of Horizons, an English-language global public policy magazine. Jeremić was a candidate in the race to succeed Ban Ki-moon as United Nations Secretary-General in 2016, finishing second overall, behind eventual winner António Guterres. He unsuccessfully ran in the 2017 Serbian presidential election as an independent candidate. In October 2017, he founded the People's Party.