Secretary-General Appoints Gillian Triggs of Australia Assistant High Commissioner, Office of United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Gillian Triggs of Australia as Assistant Secretary-General to serve as the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.  Ms. Triggs will succeed Volker Türk of Austria who has been appointed as Assistant Secretary-General for Strategic Coordination in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General.  The Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Refugees are grateful for Mr. Türk’s 30 years of dedicated service to the refugee cause, including four years as Assistant High Commissioner for Protection.

Ms. Triggs, who recently served a five-year term as President of Australia’s Human Rights Commission, brings to the position several decades of experience as an academic, practising lawyer, advocate and public policy expert.  A barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria, she is currently Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne, President of the Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal, and holder of several other eminent appointments.

An expert in international law, Ms. Triggs has an extensive history of dedicated service to human rights and the refugee cause in Australia, the Asia-Pacific region and globally.  She practised international commercial law and was Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne.  She also served as Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and as Dean and Challis Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney.

Ms. Triggs holds a Bachelor of Laws and a Doctor of Laws from the University of Melbourne in Australia, as well as a Master of Laws from Southern Methodist University in Texas, United States.