United Nations, Dec 19 Barham Salih, a former Iraqi president who was himself once a refugee, has been elected the UN High Commissioner for Refugees at a time when the agency faces the twin crises of shrinking resources and a huge increase in people needing its help.
The General Assembly on Thursday elected him unanimously on the recommendation of Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, bringing the post to a region overwhelmed by refugee problems.
“As a former refugee, I know first-hand how protection and opportunity can change the course of a life”, Salih said after his election. “That experience will inform a leadership approach grounded in empathy, pragmatism, and a principled commitment to international law”.
He will succeed Filippo Grandi of Italy, whose second term ends at the end of the year.
Welcoming his successor, Grandi said, “His background and experience make him well-suited to lead UNHCR at a time of large-scale displacement and increasingly complex humanitarian and political challenges”.
Guterres himself had held the top UN position for looking after the interests of refugees.
Except for Sadruddin Aga Khan and Japan’s Sadako Ogata, the other eight commissioners have all been Europeans.
Guterres selected Salih from a panel of ten people nominated by UN member countries.
They included Sweden’s candidate Jesper Brodin, who resigned as the CEO of the home furnishing multinational Ikea; former Spanish Foreign Minister Arancha Gonzalez Laya, and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo.
Salih was the president of Iraq from 2018 to 2022, after a stint as the regional prime minister of his native Kurdistan from 2009 to 2012.
During Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule, he was arrested in 1979 because of his involvement in the Kurdish national movement.
He fled Iraq to Britain where he got a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Cardiff, and a doctorate in statistics and computer applications from the University of Liverpool.
He is a founder of the American University of Ira in Sulaimani.
According to the UNHCR agency, there are over 117 million refugees around the world, with most concentrated in developing countries.
It has 14,600 staffers and works in 128 countries.
Earlier this year, an agency report warned of “a deadly confluence of factors pummeling millions of refugees and displaced people: rising displacement, shrinking funding and political apathy”.
It said that $1.4 billion of essential programmes are being cut or put on hold because of funding shortfalls.
Up to 11.6 million refugees and others forced to flee could risk losing UNHCR hep, it said.
Referring to Pakistan’s ouster of refugees, it said, “Around 1.9 million Afghans have returned home or been forced back since the start of the year, but financial aid for returnees is barely enough to afford food, let alone rent, undermining efforts to ensure stable reintegration”.
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