Ambassador Robert Dresen was born in Maastricht, The Netherlands, in 1977 and holds master degrees in geography from Utrecht University (The Netherlands) and in European Politics and Administration from the College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium). He joined the NATO Mission Iraq on 13 November 2022.
He started his diplomatic career in 2004, serving in the junior ranks of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague (2004-2008) and moving on to postings as first secretary for political affairs at the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Washington DC, United States (2008-2012) and as head of economic affairs in Islamabad, Pakistan (2012-2014). Between 2014 and 2019, he returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague, where he was the team leader for policy regarding Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (2014-2017), policy coordinator in the Task Force for the Dutch term as elected member in the United Nations Security Council (2017-2018), and head of the special Task Force on the follow-up of the MH17 airplane downing (2018-2019).
Prior to assuming his current assignment, he was seconded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Office of the Secretary General at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, from 2019 to 2022. In this position he contributed, inter alia, to the drafting of NATO’s 2022 Strategic Concept and the development of NATO’s new policy on climate change and security.
Ambassador Dresen is married to Suzanne de Groot, who also serves in the Dutch diplomatic service and is currently posted to Vienna, Austria, as Deputy Permanent Representative to the OSCE and Deputy Head of Mission. Besides his native Dutch, he speaks English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Catalan and basic Russian.