Barham Salih, who began his role as UNHCR chief on January 1, is a former President of Iraq and the first non-European to hold the job of chief of the UN’s refugee agency.

He is also a former prime minister of the Kurdistan Region and a former deputy prime minister of the Iraqi federal government.

Dr Salih’s The appointment breaks the tradition of European leadership of the UNHCR.

He was selected after a competitive process in New York that attracted candidates from various countries.

Outgoing UNHCR boss Filipo Grandi said: “Barham Salih brings decades of high-level public service, marked by steady leadership and thoughtful diplomacy. Coming from a country recently marked by conflict, persecution and displacement, he has first-hand experience of the challenges many refugees face today. 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.”

Mr Grandi’s ten-year tenure as High Commissioner ended on 31 December 2025. He became High Commissioner in January 2016 and has since led UNHCR’s response to major displacement crises worldwide, including in Syria, Ukraine and Sudan.

Despite deep cuts in humanitarian funding this year, UNHCR remains present in 128 countries with nearly 90 per cent of its more than 14,600 staff working in the field. This month, UNHCR marks 75 years of protecting people forced to flee.

Dr Salih served as President of Iraq between 2018 and 2022 and has a career spanning more than three decades of governmental service in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region.

He also served twice as Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, in 2001–2004 and 2009–2012, and as Deputy Prime Minister of Iraq, in 2004–2009, concurrently serving as Minister of Planning.

Dr Salih is said to have played a central role in Iraq’s post-2003 reconstruction and economic recovery, including negotiation of the International Compact with Iraq with the United Nations and the World Bank.

Before his appointment, Dr Salih was a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Centre for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School, in the US, and as Leadership Fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

He was founder and Chairperson of the American University of Iraq and holds a PhD in Statistics and Computer Applications in Engineering from the University of Liverpool, in the UK.

He is fluent in Kurdish, Arabic and English.

Dr Salih was born in 1960 in Sulaymaniyah, in Kurdistan. He was arrested in 1979 by the Ba’athist regime twice on charges of involvement in the Kurdish national movement by taking some photos of protesters in Sulaymaniyah city. He spent 43 days in detention in a Special Investigation Commission prison in Kirkuk where he was tortured.

Once released, he finished high school and left Iraq for the UK to flee continued persecution.

In March 2019, Dr Salih submitted the groundbreaking “Yazidi Female Survivors Law” to the Iraqi Parliament for review.

The ground-breaking bill set forth a number of reparation measures for female Yazidi survivors of captivity.

It was seen by the Yazidi leaders as an important step toward a secure future for the survivors, and so they could move on and rebuild their homes, which were destroyed by IS fighting.

On 1 March 2021, Parliament passed the Yazidi [Female] Survivors Bill into law, and the law was welcomed as an important first step in acknowledging the gender-based trauma of sexual violence and need for tangible redress.”