In November 2019, H.E. Ambassador Andrés Terán Parral has presented his credential to H.M. the King of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, officially becoming Ecuador’s top representative in The Hague. This new post comes on the heels of a successful diplomatic career of over 35 years.
In late 2019, the diplomatic community of the Netherlands has welcomed a new member: H.E. Mr. Andrés Terán Parral, the new Ambassador of the Republic of Ecuador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The new Ecuadorian Ambassador, a law graduate from the Universidad Internacional del Ecuador, is an extremely experienced diplomat, with a career of over 35 years in a number of different posts.
Mr. Terán Parral started to work for Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1981, thus beginning a career that led him to take increasingly high-level positions, alternating between Ecuador’s capital city and other countries throughout the world.
During his first stints in Quito, Ambassador Terán Parral covered a vast array of different roles. Starting in in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he worked as Third Secretary at the Department of Cultural Promotion (1983), Desk Officer for the US and Canada (1989-1991), Undersecretary of Bilateral Affairs (1990-91), as well as in the Office of the Vice Minister (1991-1992). In between these roles, he held positions at Ecuador’s embassies in Paraguay (1984-1989) and Spain (1992-1997).
In the late 1990s, Mr. Terán Parral also served as Head of the Office of Diplomatic Coordination for Ecuador’s Vice Presidency (1998) and Head of Protocol for the Presidency (2000), before moving again abroad, serving at Ecuador’s embassies in Belgium (2001-2004) and the United States (2004-2006).
In the mid-2000s, Ambassador Terán Parral took up a number of new positions, serving as Legal Advisor of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (2006), Under Secretary General of the Ecuadorian Central Bank’s Board of Directors (2007), and Chief of Staff of the Foreign Minister (2008), before moving to his country’s embassy in Uruguay (2009).
In November 2009, Mr. Terán Parral was then chosen by his government to attempt a rapprochement with the government of Colombia amidst a diplomatic crisis – an attempt that succeeded, as the two countries restored diplomatic ties the following year.
In March 2011, Mr. Terán Parral was finally promoted to highest diplomatic rank and named Ambassador to Canada, the country where he stayed until 2015, when he returned to Quito to serve as Director of International Affairs at the Office of the Prosecutor General. In 2016, he returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as Director for South America, before being appointed Vice Minister in June 2018. Finally, in September 2019, the Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno asked Ambassador Terán Parral to represent his country in the Netherlands, where he is currently serving as Ambassador.
Ambassador Terán Parral was born in Lima (Peru) in 1960, and grew up across four different Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, El Salvador, and Ecuador). He speaks fluently four languages – English, French, and Portuguese, in addition to his Spanish mother tongue. Throughout his life, the Ambassador has received high-level decorations in Ecuador, Chile, Spain, and Brazil. Ambassador Terán Parral is married to Mrs. María Rosa Egüez, a clinical psychologist, with whom he has three children.
