Antón Leis, UNHCR Deputy High Commissioner for Operations

Eduardo González The current director of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), Antón Leis, has been appointed Deputy High Commissioner for Operations at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), as reported by the United Nations Secretary-General and confirmed by sources at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to The Diplomat. The appointment of Antón Leis, whose candidacy was directly supported by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, and the Spanish Government, “is a recognition of Spain and its foreign and cooperation policy, committed to multilateralism, humanitarian action, and the situation of the nearly 120 million displaced people worldwide,” the same sources indicated. Antón Leis, from Galicia, was appointed director of AECID in July 2021 and will leave the post in the coming weeks. During these almost five years, Leis witnessed firsthand the adoption of the new Law on Cooperation for Sustainable Development (in February 2023), which introduced, among its main innovations, the granting of legal force to Spain's commitment to allocate 0.7% of GDP to development aid and, in application of this same law, the creation of a new Statute for Development Workers and the approval of the new Statute of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID) itself, finalized in December 2024. Leis holds a Law degree with Extraordinary Distinction from the Carlos III University of Madrid. He has a Master of Laws from Harvard Law School and a double Master's degree in Public Administration from the London School of Economics and the Paris Institute of Political Studies, where he specialized in economics and development policy. He speaks English, French, and Portuguese. Before being appointed Director of AECID, Leis served as an advisor to the Secretary-General of the OECD, where he is an OECD official. Previously, he worked as a project manager and governance and private sector specialist at the African Development Bank, based in Tunisia and Ivory Coast, and was a legal advisor at the World Bank for the Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa regions. Within the Spanish government, Leis served as an advisor to the Secretary General for International Affairs, EU, G20, and Global Security in the Prime Minister's Office between 2018 and 2020 (under Prime Minister José Manuel Albares), where he coordinated Spain's participation in the G20 and other multilateral affairs. He also served as an advisor to the Secretary of State for International Cooperation. Leis maintained excellent relations with Albares through his position as Secretary General of the PSOE in Paris and as a member of the Socialist Party's Federal Committee representing the PSOE in Europe. "UNHCR is one of the leading humanitarian agencies in the United Nations system, with which Spain has very special ties," Foreign Ministry sources emphasized. “It is no coincidence that Spain is the leading country in private contributions to the organization through UNHCR,” they added. “Antón Leis will leave AECID in the coming weeks after almost five years in office, during which he has made a decisive contribution to the reform of Spanish Cooperation and AECID itself, with a new law and a significant increase in its budget, capabilities, and strategic direction as a pillar of our foreign policy,” they concluded.

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