UNHCR WELCOMES NEW CHIEF, FORMER REFUGEE BRINGS FIRSTHAND EXPERIENCE
Read Time:2 Minute, 29 Second
By: Balogun Ibrahim
Former Iraqi President Abdul Latif Salih, 65, became the first ex-head of state to lead the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) earlier this year.
Speaking to AFP during his first trip in the new role to Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, Salih described his appointment as “a profound moral and legal responsibility.”
“I know the pain of losing a home, losing your friends,” he said.
Salih visited Kakuma on Sunday, East Africa’s second-largest refugee camp, which has been in operation since 1992 and currently hosts around 300,000 people from South Sudan, Somalia, Uganda, and Burundi.
Barham Salih has experienced torture and the harrowing pain of exile. Four decades after his own ordeal, he now leads the UN refugee agency, which is facing a funding shortfall amid growing humanitarian needs.
“The world should not allow this to continue,” Salih said, commending Kenya’s new initiative to transform its refugee camps into economic hubs.
“We should not only protect refugees, but also provide them with more durable solutions,” he added, emphasizing, “The best outcome is to have peace restored in their own countries… there is no place better than home.”
Born in 1960 in Sulaymaniyah, a stronghold of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), Barham Salih is the son of a judge and a women’s rights activist. The PUK campaigned for self-determination for Iraq’s Kurdish population.
Salih went into exile in Iran in 1974, spending a year at a school for refugees. By 1979, as a teenager back in Iraq and a PUK member, he was arrested twice by Saddam Hussein’s regime.
“I was released after 43 days, having endured torture, electric shocks, and beatings,” he recalled.
Despite his ordeal, Salih ranked among Iraq’s top three high school students, according to a former classmate, before fleeing with his family to Britain, where he earned a degree in computer engineering and a doctorate.
“Salih has real experience of exile… He brings a personal perspective on displacement, which is extremely valuable,” said Filippo Grandi, his predecessor at UNHCR, in an interview with AFP last month.
Following Saddam Hussein’s overthrow in 2003, Salih pursued a successful political career in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraq’s federal government, serving as president from 2018 to 2022 in a largely ceremonial capacity.
Refugee numbers have doubled to 117 million over the past decade, the UNHCR reported in June, even as funding has declined sharply, particularly since Donald Trump returned to the White House.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently commended Salih’s experience as a “crisis negotiator and architect of national reforms” at a time when the agency faces “very serious challenges.”
“We experienced significant budget cuts last year, and many staff positions were reduced,” Salih told AFP.
“But we must understand the situation and adapt,” he said, calling for “greater efficiency and accountability” while urging the international community to fulfill its “legal and moral obligations to help.”
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