Secretary-General

SG/A/940
BIO/3685
PAL/2029


Department of Public Information • News and Media Division • New York


SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS FILIPPO GRANDI OF ITALY AS DEPUTY COMMISSIONER-GENERAL

OF Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ RELIEF AGENCY FOR PALESTINE REFUGEES

The Secretary-General has today appointed Filippo Grandi ( Italy) as Deputy Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµRWA).

Mr. Grandi has been serving since May 2004 as the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General responsible for political affairs at the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµAMA).  Prior to that, and also in Afghanistan, he was Chief of Mission of the United High Commissioner for Refugees (Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµHCR), a position he held from September 2001.

From 1997 to 2001, Mr. Grandi worked in the Executive Office of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµHCR in Geneva, as Special Assistant and then Chief of Staff.  Since 1988, when he joined Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµHCR, Mr. Grandi was posted in Sudan, then served in refugee programmes in Syria, Turkey and Iraq after the first Gulf War, led various emergency operations — in Kenya, Benin, Ghana, Liberia, the Great Lakes Region of Central Africa, Yemen and Afghanistan among others — and was Field Coordinator for Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµHCR and United Nations humanitarian activities in the Democratic Republic of Congo during the civil war in 1996-1997.  Between 1984 and 1987 he worked with different non-governmental organizations carrying out refugee programmes in Thailand and Italy.

Mr. Grandi, 48, graduated from the State Universities of Venice and Milan ( Italy), and from the Gregorian University in Rome ( Italy) with a Bachelor’s degree in philosophy.

* *** *


For information media • not an official record