Sigrid Kaag

Sigrid Agnes Maria Kaag (born 2 November 1961) is a Dutch politician. She is party leader of Democrats 66 (D66). She is finance minister and also first Deputy Prime Minister in the Fourth Rutte cabinet. She was foreign minister in the Third Rutte cabinet, but stepped down in September 2021 because the evacuation of Afghans who worked for the Netherlands and tried to flee from the Taliban after they conquered Afghanistan, did not quite go well. Defense minister Ank Bijleveld resigned next day. She was also minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation in the Third Rutte cabinet from October 2017 to August 2021, and has been D66 leader since September 2020 (succeeded Alexander Pechtold).
Kaag was born in Rijswijk and grew up in Zeist.
She studied Arabic, Middle East studies, and international relations. She studied at Utrecht University, the American University in Cairo, Oxford University, and the University of Exeter.
She worked in several positions at the United Nations, for example at UNICEF and as an Under-Secretary-General.
She is a Catholic, and married to a Palestinian dentist. Her husband is a former diplomat and politician of the PLO. Kaag is fluent in six languages, among which Arabic, Spanish, French, and German.