Dr. Haitham Saad Al-Oudah, first secretary at the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs and director of UN and international organizations affairs at the Permanent Mission of the Kingdom in Vienna since September of last year.
Al-Oudah joined the Ministry in 2016 as second secretary at the International Organizations Department under the deputy ministry for International Multilateral Affairs.
Al-Oudah was part of the team that established the Kingdom’s first mission dedicated to the EU in 2018, where he was the director of economic and cultural affairs at the Mission of Saudi Arabia to the European Union in Brussels.
During his posting in Brussels, he was responsible for the 2020 G20 Riyadh summit and the 15th meeting of the Group of Twenty.
Al-Oudah earned his bachelor’s degree in international relations and Middle East politics in 2010 and a master’s in international affairs in 2011 from the University of Exeter, UK.
He received his PhD in political science in 2016 from the same university, where he was also a postgraduate teaching assistant of politics and economy of the contemporary Middle East and North Africa.
Al-Oudah is also certified in learning and teaching in higher education from the university in collaboration with the British Higher Education Academy.
During his doctorate, he was a visiting researcher at the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh in 2014.
He received training in various courses throughout his career, most recently on the nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament from the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation.
In addition, he attended intensive training courses at the UN Institute for Training and Research including courses on the EU and its mechanism in Belgium, and on the art of dealing with media in the UK.
