Biography|Erik Solheim — The Château Where He Took the DAC Chair

The Development Assistance Committee sits in Paris, not in a donor capital's aid ministry.

In January 2013 Erik Solheim took the chair at the OECD's headquarters, the Château de la Muette at 2 rue André Pascal.

He followed J. Brian Atwood, who left in December 2012.

Development Today had flagged the appointment the previous November: the first Nordic in the post, and the first European career politician to hold it.

The Global Partnership for Education later dated the start to January 2013.

The Storting's later biographical note lists the DAC role from 2014.

The committee's own chair list and contemporary reporting both put him in 2013.

He stayed until mid-2016, when Charlotte Petri Gornitzka of Sweden took over as he left for Nairobi.

The château is a 1920s Rothschild house on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne.

It has been the OECD seat since the organisation succeeded the OEEC in 1961.

Solheim used the chair to push official development assistance toward the least developed countries and toward tax and private capital, including the Addis Tax Initiative.

The building is the workplace of that brief.

It is not a private residence.

A visitor sees a guarded international headquarters, not a museum of French hunting lodges.

The DAC is a donors' forum, not a UN agency.

The pin still matters because this is where the aid-watchdog job sat while he held it.

Photo: MySociety / Jon Byles Hardman, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.