Ruben Maye Nsue Mangue presented his credentials as Equatorial Guinea’s ambassador to the United States to President Barack Obama on September 17, 2013. Equatorial Guinea has a reputation as having one of the world’s worst human rights record, one which Nsue has spent much of his career defending.
Nsue was born January 24, 1963, in Mbon-Ekuak Mongomo, in Wele Nzas province of Equatorial Guinea. That landlocked province is about as far as one can get from the nation’s island capital of Malabo. Nsue studied French language and civilization at the National University of Benin, and went on to Moscow’s Patrice Lumumba University, earning a Master’s degree in law and a doctorate in international law.
After graduation, Nsue remained in Moscow for several years, working as director of the United Nations Refugee Reception Center and as an assistant professor of international law at the Moscow Private Institute for the Study of International Law.
In 1989, Nsue began working for his government, as legal counsel to the permanent mission of Equatorial Guinea to the United Nations (until 1991) and to the embassy of Equatorial Guinea in Moscow (until 1994). During this period, Nsue was also working as legal adviser to the Catholic relief organization Caritas Internationalis in Moscow and as a legal consultant to the International Catholic Migration Commission in Geneva from 1992 to 1994.
In 1994, Nsue was named protecting official of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, headquartered in Geneva with missions in Kenya and Rwanda. He returned to Equatorial Guinea in 1995, serving as the government’s legal representative before the constitutional court, director of justice, religion and penitentiaries within the Ministry of Justice and as chief diplomatic and human rights counsel in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was named Minister of Justice and Religion in 1998. While in that post, he had to deflect charges of human rights violations in his country from United Nations officials.
In 2004, Nsue was fired as part of a government shakeup by his cousin, the nation’s dictator, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Nsue resurfaced in 2007 as Equatorial Guinea’s permanent representative to the African Union and the UN Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Nsue is married to Petra Asue Ngua Nchama.
-Steve Straehley
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