Former Iraqi President Barham Saleh. (Credit: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images)
Former Iraqi President Barham Saleh, a Kurdish figure, has been appointed to lead the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR), a U.N. source wishing to remain anonymous told AFP on Friday.
He will succeed Italian Filippo Grandi in January, who has been at the helm of the UNHCR for 10 years. Numerous other candidates had also been considered, including Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo and Jesper Brodin, the outgoing CEO of the holding company that oversees most Ikea stores.
Saleh, 65, will take office as the UNHCR faces an immense crisis: The number of forcibly displaced people worldwide has nearly doubled in 10 years, while funding for international aid is drastically decreasing, especially with Donald Trump’s return to the White House this year. The organization has also been forced to cut more than a quarter of its staff since the beginning of the year, nearly 5,000 employees.
Barham Saleh, who studied in the United Kingdom, is considered a moderate politician. He was a member of the interim authorities set up by the U.S. military command after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime following the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.
He later served as the planning minister in the federal government born from Iraq’s first multi-party elections in 2005.
A year later, he became deputy prime minister under Nouri al-Maliki, and after his term ended, returned to Erbil in 2009, where he served as head of the Kurdistan regional government until 2011.
The son of a judge and a women’s rights activist, he was president of Iraq from 2018 to 2022 — a largely ceremonial role, traditionally reserved for a Kurd since the first multi-party elections in 2005.
In 2014, some had predicted his return to Baghdad for the honorary post of president of the republic, but at the last moment, Saleh withdrew in favor of Fouad Massoum, also a member of his party, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).
Born in Sulaimaniyah, a stronghold of the PUK, he has also initiated major projects in this second city of Kurdistan, notably advocating for the establishment of the American University of Sulaimaniyah.
