Santiago Oñate Laborde

Santiago Oñate Laborde (b. Mexico City, 1949) is a Mexican lawyer and politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).[1]

Oñate Laborde graduated as lawyer from the Law Faculty in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México in 1972. He has gone on to serve in several positions inside the PRI and in the Mexican government. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1985 and to the Federal District Legislative Assembly upon expiration of his term as a federal legislator in 1998. In 1991 and 1992 he served as Ambassador to the Organization of American States and, in 1993, as the head of the Environmental Attorney's Office (Procuraduría Federal de Protección al Medio Ambiente or PROFEPA). In 1995 he was designated President of the PRI.[2] He served for President Carlos Salinas as the head of the Presidency's Office (Oficina de la Presidencia). President Ernesto Zedillo appointed him as Secretary of Labor.

In 1997, Oñate Laborde became Ambassador of Mexico to the United Kingdom, position he would hold until 2001, year when he became Ambassador of Mexico to the Netherlands. While serving as ambassador in the Netherlands, he also acted as the Permanent Representative of Mexico to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. His term as ambassador ended in 2003, but he would continue his activities in the OPCW, serving as legal adviser and later on as special adviser to the Director General. In 2013 he became the Permanent Observer of Mexico to the Council of Europe, in Strasbourg, France.

He pursued further studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science and at the University of Wisconsin, the latter of which also saw him as professor, along with the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and Leiden University.