Summary:
Drawing on her experience from a career at the United Nations, Michèle Griffin will discuss the recent UN Summit of the Future and what the negotiations tell us about the future of multilateralism at a time of increased risk, volatility and interdependence.

Bio:
In a career spanning nearly thirty years at the United Nations, Ms. Michèle Griffin has served as a senior policy advisor and director of policy planning to successive Secretaries-General, with responsibility for strategic thinking on emerging challenges, the geopolitical landscape and the future of international cooperation.

Most recently, as Director of the Summit of the Future, she conceived and led the effort to negotiate the historic Pact for the Future - the most comprehensive global agreement in decades, encompassing new issues such as governing Artificial Intelligence, managing the risks and opportunities of new technologies, digital cooperation, international financial architecture reform, and acting for future generations. The Pact is also the first agreement in decades on nuclear disarmament, outer space governance, and Security Council reform.

Previously, Ms. Griffin directed signature policy initiatives of the Secretary-General on such issues as COVID-19, hate speech, human rights, and conflict prevention. She played a key role in shaping the UN’s response to cholera in Haiti and in a variety of peacekeeping mission mandates and renewals, travelling with the Secretary-General to Haiti, Burundi, South Sudan, DR Congo and elsewhere. She served for ten years in the UN’s Department of Political Affairs, where she set up and ran the United Nations Mediation Support Unit and its standby team of mediation experts, supporting peace processes around the world, including in Kenya, Sudan, Cyprus and Afghanistan. She played a role in major United Nations reform exercises, such as 2005 World Summit and the 2001 Brahimi report; and served as a Policy Advisor on Crisis Prevention and Peacebuilding in UNDP. Her first UN assignment was at the Permanent Mission of Ireland to the United Nations, covering human rights.

Beyond the UN, she has worked in think tanks such as the International Peace Institute, the US Institute of Peace, and the Brookings Institution, been a Visiting Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania and Stanford University and an adjunct professor at Columbia University. She has lectured and published widely on global issues and geopolitics. She received her BA in European studies from Trinity College Dublin, where she was also a Foundation Scholar, and her Master’s degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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