Filippo Grandi


Filippo Grandi is a diplomat and United Nations official of Italy, current United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
He previously served as Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East and United Nations Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan.

Education

Grandi has a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the universities of Venice and Milan, and from the Gregorian University in Rome.

Career

Grandi started his career in the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1988, and has served in a variety of countries, including Sudan, Syria, Turkey, and Iraq after the first Gulf War. He also headed a number of emergency operations including in Kenya, Benin, Ghana, Liberia, the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, Yemen and Afghanistan. Between 1996 and 1997, he was Field Coordinator for UNHCR and United Nations humanitarian activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the civil war. From 1997 to 2001, he worked in the Executive Office of the UNHCR in Geneva, as Special Assistant and then Chief of Staff. From 2001 to 2004, he served as the UNHCR's Chief of Mission.
Grandi then moved to the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan in 2004, where he served as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General responsible for political affairs from 2004–2005. In 2005 he moved to UNRWA, first as Deputy Commissioner-General and then from 2010 as Commissioner-General until 29 March 2014.
On 11 November 2015 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced his intention to appoint Grandi as the next United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to take office in 2016.
Since 2019, Grandi has been a member of the World Economic Forum High-Level Group on Humanitarian Investing, co-chaired by Børge Brende, Kristalina Georgieva and Peter Maurer.

Other activities