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Women in Charge

Amy Pope

Amy Pope, the new IOM Director General, the American candidate who won the election to lead the International Organization for Migration, a UN system agency that works with Internally Displaced People, and also on migratory flux across borders to promote orderly migration, presented her credentials at the UN Office in Geneva, and gave the first news media briefing to the international press corps in Geneva.

She is likeable, well-spoken, articulate, and has all the issues at her fingertips, never missing a beat during the Q&A period of a press briefing, which was attended by more than 60 journalists, and was grilled by about 10 reporters, on her vision and on the current global migration crisis.

It is a breath of fresh-air, for UN agencies tend to be staffed with people that speak, as the French say, with a “langue de bois”, meaning they are so afraid to say some non-sense or offend country-members sensibilities, that they end-up going to press briefings reading…