H.E. Mr. Hernán Salinas Burgos is the new Ambassador of the Republic of Chile to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. He presented his credentials to His Majesty King Willem-Alexander on July 14th, 2021.
Mr. Salinas Burgos was born in Santiago, where he earned his Bachelor of Law in 1975 from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (PUC), followed by a Master’s degree in International Law from the University of Chile (UC) in 1983. He then took up many roles throughout his career with a primary focus in International Law, including being a diplomat and a professor.
From 1990 to 1996, Mr. Salinas Burgos was the Deputy Head of the Legal Affairs Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Chile (MFA). During this period, he was also a member of the American Society of International Law and an associate member of the Spanish-Portuguese American Institute of International Law. In addition, he became the Extraordinary Professor of Public International Law (International Human Rights) at UC from 1994 onwards.
After his position in the Legal Affairs Department, Mr. Salinas Burgos moved on to becoming a member of the International Humanitarian Commission of Inquiry into the 1997 Additional Protocol I of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, a role he held until 2002. During his time as a member, he became a Professor of Public International Law at PUC in 1998.
In the following years, Mr. Salinas Burgos focused on education as he assumed the role of Professor of International Law, Trade and Investment at UC from 2006, teaching the subject Diplomatic Protection. Three years later, he also became a professor for the International Master’s Programme in Law at PUC, teaching the course Regulation of International Trade.
In the early 2010s, Mr. Salinas Burgos assumed a multitude of roles. From 2010 to 2014, he was Ambassador and the Director of the Legal Affairs Department at the MFA. During this period, he was also the Chairman of the National Humanitarian Commission for the Implementation of the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and its complementary instruments, as well as the Chairman of the National Humanitarian Commission for the Implementation of the 1949 Vienna Conventions. Both of these positions were held from 2011 to 2014. In addition, he was the Chairman of the Sixth (Judicial) Committee of the United Nations General Assembly in 2011. In the midst of all this, Mr. Salinas Burgos earned an additional Master of Laws at PUC and became a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of Chile in the same year, teaching the subject Regulation of International Trade.
Afterward, Mr. Salinas Burgos was a member of the Inter-American Judicial Committee (IAJC) of the Organization of American States (OAS) from 2014 to 2018, during which he was also president from 2017 to 2018. Simultaneously, he was a member of the Chilean Legal Defense Team in the Maritime Issue between Peru and Chile as well as in the Legal Issue between Bolivia and Chile at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Throughout this period, he was also a member of the Administrative Tribunal of the Latin American Integration Association for two years until 2015. Furthermore, he was the President of the Chilean Society for International Law from 2017 to 2018.
Following these roles, Mr. Salinas Burgos has been a member of the National Group of the Permanent Court of Arbitration since 2019. Until he became the Ambassador-Designate of Chile to the Netherlands, he was the permanent representative for Chile at the OAS for three years.
The diplomat community in The Hague sends a warm welcome to Ambassador Salinas Burgos and wishes him all the best in his new term.
