Mohamed Benaissa
Mohamed Benaissa was a Moroccan politician who served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1999 to 2007.
Background
Benaissa was born in Asilah, Morocco, on 3 January 1937. He received a bachelor's degree in communications from the University of Minnesota in 1963, which also awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2007.Benaissa died on 28 February 2025, at the age of 88.
Career
After studying at the University of Minnesota, Benaissa went on to serve the United Nations and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization for approximately eleven years, first as press attache to the UN Moroccan Mission in New York, then as information officer at ECA - Economic Commission for Africa - in Addis Ababa, regional information adviser for Africa at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization's regional office in Accra, Ghana, communications adviser at the FAO headquarters in Rome, later director of the information division at FAO, and finally as Assistant-Secretary General at the UN World Food Conference. Benaissa returned to Morocco to become a member of Parliament for the city of Asilah from 1977 to 1983, and then Mayor of Asilah in 1984, a position to which he had been reelected three times up to 2010. From 1981 - 2025, Benaissa each year organized an international festival in Asilah, initially a venue for artists, poets, musicians and writers to come together each summer to participate in a cultural event, similar to the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Over the years, the Asilah Festival added a small convention center where speakers from many countries came to make presentations and discuss issues.From 1977 to 1985, Benaissa also served as chief editor of Al Mithaq and Al Maghrib dailies, the newspapers of the Rassemblement National des Indépendants party to which he then belonged.
From 1985 to 1992 Benaissa was the Minister of Culture, and subsequently the Moroccan Ambassador to the United States from 1993 to 1999. In April 1999, King Hassan II appointed Benaissa to Minister of Foreign Affairs just three months before the King's death. Benaissa remained in his position under Hassan's successor, King Mohammed VI, until Foreign Minister Delegate Taieb Fassi Fihri replaced him in the government formed on 15 October 2007 under Prime Minister Abbas El Fassi.