International Advisory Council /

Carne Ross

Carne Ross is the Founder and former Executive Director of Independent Diplomat (ID). Ross founded ID in 2004 to address the “diplomatic deficit” created by a diplomatic system that all too often excludes or marginalises many governments and groups most affected by the decisions made within it, and usually those who are suffering the most. As Executive Director of ID, he played an integral role in each client project and in guiding the organisation.

Carne has over fifteen years of diplomatic experience in the British Foreign Office and United Nations, working on a wide range of issues and regions including Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the global environment, terrorism and post-conflict reconstruction. He is experienced in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy and familiar with major international institutions, in particular the United Nations.

Between 1997-1998, Ross served as the speechwriter to the British Foreign Secretary, preparing speeches on all areas of British foreign policy. He then spent four and a half years in the UK delegation on the UN Security Council, where he was the delegation’s Middle East “expert” (with the rank of First Secretary). His work included the drafting and negotiation of several important Security Council resolutions, such as SCR 1284 which rewrote the Council’s Iraq policy and established UNMOVIC, the weapons inspection body. He also negotiated for the UK the resolution establishing the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and the Council’s resolution of 12 September 2001 condemning the attacks of the day before.

Ross resigned from the British Foreign Office in 2004, after giving then-secret evidence to an official inquiry into the use of intelligence on WMD in advance of the 2003 Iraq war. He has also subsequently testified to the Chilcot Inquiry investigating the lead-up to and conduct of that war.

Carne Ross is a trained negotiator and economist. He is also a playwright (“The Fox” enjoyed a short run in New York in early 2001) and author. His latest book, The Leaderless Revolution, was published in 2011 by Simon & Schuster (UK) and Blue Rider Press, an imprint of Penguin (US). His first book Independent Diplomat: Dispatches from an Unaccountable Elite was published in 2007 by Hurst & Co. (UK) and Cornell University Press (US).

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