GENEVA: The Red Cross said on Friday that it had appointed Pierre Krahenbuhl, a controversial former head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, as its director-general.
The Swiss national, with more than 30 years of experience in the humanitarian sector, will take over in April when current chief Robert Mardini completes his four-year term.
“The Assembly of the International Committee of the Red Cross or ICRC has appointed Pierre Krahenbuhl as the organization’s next director-general,” it said in a statement.
Krahenbuhl, 57, has spent 25 years in prominent roles at the ICRC and serves as secretary-general to the ICRC assembly.
BACKGROUND
Pierre Krahenbuhl will be taking the helm of the ICRC as it grapples with its own funding shortage, which has forced it to make budget cuts and slash some 1,500 jobs.
“He is recognized as a strategic and purpose-driven leader with deep organizational experience and dedication to the ICRC,” the statement said.
In 2014, Krahenbuhl was appointed commissioner-general of the UN agency that supports Palestinian refugees or UNRWA.
He resigned from that position in 2019 amid an internal probe into alleged mismanagement and ethical abuses at the organization.
The findings were never made public, but Swiss media reported that it largely cleared him of the main allegations.
Krahenbuhl told the Le Temps daily that the probe “cleared me of the serious charges brought against me (fraud, corruption, mismanagement of funds, etc.) and retained only a few management failures.”
But others have contested that, and a Le Temps investigation maintained that the failures were not trivial and would have led to “inevitable disciplinary action” against Krahenbuhl if he had not left his post.
At the time of Krahenbuhl’s resignation, UNRWA was facing relentless attacks by the administration of former US president Donald Trump, which, along with Israel, accused it of perpetuating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In 2018, Washington decided to suspend, then stop entirely, its contribution to the agency’s budget, robbing it of its most significant donor and sparking a funding crunch.
US President Joe Biden’s administration later fully restored the country’s support.
Krahenbuhl will be taking the helm of the ICRC as it grapples with its own funding shortage, forcing it to make budget cuts and slash some 1,500 jobs.
The ICRC is also facing pressure over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and, in particular, its response to the war raging in Gaza.
The Swiss-based organization has been accused by both sides of not condemning the other and of insufficient help to those detained or being held hostage.
ICRC President Mirjana Spoljaric told journalists this week about maintaining neutrality in all conflicts and crises.
“Without neutrality, we wouldn’t be able to operate; without confidentiality... we wouldn’t be successful,” she said.
