Malta’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations has been elected to serve as vice-chair of one of the organisation’s key committees. 

Giovanni Buttigieg will serve in that role at the UN’s Committee for Programme and Coordination (CPC), which is responsible for planning, programming and coordination of the UN’s Economic and Social Council and General Assembly. 

Malta serves as the representative of the Western European and Others Group at the UN, having been elected to the CPC in September. 

Buttigieg was elected as the committee vice-chair on Friday and will serve in that role for the committee's 61st session, to be held between June 1 and 25. He is the first Maltese person to fill the post since Arvid Pardo in 1971. 

Pardo served as the committee’s vice-chair during its 9th session, held between May and June 1971. It was in this committee that Malta proposed the establishment of a United Nations office for the seas, and urged international partners to evaluate the need for an effective international strategy for oceans. 

Those proposals would culminate in the UN’s Convention on the Law of the Sea, which remains a cornerstone of international law to this day.