HE Rafiq Hariri

Former Prime Minister

Lebanon

His Excellency Rafiq Hariri served as Lebanon’s Prime Minister for over ten years from 1992, leading the reconstruction of the country, ravaged after 17 years of civil war. In 1996, he co-chaired the first Friends of Lebanon conference in Washington, D.C., which resulted in two subsequent conferences, Paris I and II, which raised about USD 0.5 billion in grants and loans to help Lebanon sustain its reconstruction and development efforts. Prior to that, Mr. Hariri worked for 28 years in Saudi Arabia as a successful entrepreneur. In 1979, Mr. Hariri founded the Hariri Foundation, a non-profit organization that helped educate more than 30,000 Lebanese students in top universities in Lebanon, the U.S., the U.K., France and Canada.

Mr. Hariri studied at the Arab University of Beirut, majoring in business administration.