UN elects former Iraqi President Barham Salih as head of refugee agency

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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The United Nations General Assembly on Thursday approved former Iraqi President Barham Salih as the next head of the U.N. refugee agency, its first from the Middle East since the late 1970s.

The 193-member world body elected the 65-year-old Kurdish politician as the U.N. high commissioner for refugees by consensus and a bang of the gavel by Assembly President Annalena Baerbock. Diplomats in the assembly chamber burst into applause as Salih’s election became official.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a former refugee chief who recommended Salih for the post, said he brings “senior diplomatic, political and administrative leadership experience” to the job, including as “a refugee, crisis negotiator and architect of national reforms.”

At the age of 19 in 1979, Salih was reportedly arrested twice by Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party on charges of involvement in the Kurdish national movement and spent 43 days in detention. When he was released, he finished high school and fled to the United Kingdom to avoid further persecution.

After Saddam was ousted by a U.S.-led coalition in 2003, Salih returned to Iraq and held various posts in the government. He became Iraq’s president in 2018, in the immediate aftermath of the Islamic State group’s rampage across Iraq and the battle to take back the territory seized by the extremist group. He served until 2022.

Salih succeeds longtime agency veteran Filippo Grandi, whose second five-year term expires Dec. 31. Salih's five-year term starts Jan. 1.

Salih will take the reins of the Geneva-based UNHCR at the end of a devastating year for many U.N. organizations, including the refugee agency. The U.N. has cut spending and thousands of jobs in the wake of sharply reduced foreign aid contributions by the United States — traditionally its top donor — and other Western countries.

In a statement after his election, Salih said his experience as a refugee “will inform a leadership approach grounded in empathy, pragmatism, and a principled commitment to international law.”

With record displacement and severe funding shortages for humanitarian operations, he said, helping the world’s refugees requires “a renewed focus on impact, accountability and efficiency.”