GENEVA: The Red Cross said 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 (ICRC) has appointed Pierre Krahenbuhl as the organisation’s next director-general,” it said in a statement.

Krahenbuhl, 57, has spent 25 years in prominent roles at the ICRC and is currently serving as secretary-general to the ICRC assembly.

“He is recognised as a strategic and purpose-driven leader with deep organisational experience and dedication to the ICRC,” the statement said.

In 2014, Krahenbuhl was appointed commissioner-general of the United Nations agency that supports Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

He resigned from that position in 2019 amid an internal probe into alleged mismanagement and ethical abuses at the organisation.

The findings were never made public, but Swiss media reported that it largely cleared him of the main allegations.

Krahenbuhl himself 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.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2023