Speaker

Azita Berar Awad is the Chair of the Board of UNRISD ( United Nations Research Institute for Social Development); member and the current Chair of the OHCHR Board of Trustees on technical cooperation in the field of Human Rights. She is the Director of Policy at the Global Labour Organization (GLO), a network of research and policy institutions on economics and labour markets.

She has extensive experience in international development cooperation and in the UN system. She joined the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1983 and has held several senior leadership positions including those of the Deputy Regional Director and Director of Multi-disciplinary Technical Team for Arab States (1999-2002), Director of National Policy Group in the Policy Integration Department (2002-2006) and Director of the Employment Policy Department (2006-2017).

She has advised numerous senior policy makers among governments and other stakeholders, across regions and in a variety of contexts of development, on the formulation and implementation of inclusive and coherent economic and employment policies.

Azita Berar Awad has participated in and contributed to major global Summits and economic and social cooperation mechanisms such as the G20, BRICS, and the 2030 Development agenda. She has led and facilitated multiple dialogues and international negotiations including those leading to the formulation and adoption of several new international labour standards as well as setting in place innovative global policy and governance frameworks on employment and social policy.

She led the ILO’s response to the youth employment crisis and founded inter alia, the Global Initiative on Decent Jobs for Youth in 2016 as the most overarching and inclusive multi-stakeholder partnership established under the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030.

In 2020, she founded the Global Network of Policy Research on Youth Transitions gathering academia and think tanks from the Global North and the Global South with International Organizations.

Over the years she led policy analysis, innovative research and publications and advocacy campaigns inter-alia in the fields of pro-employment macro-economic policies, poverty reduction strategies, informal economy, labor market integration of refugees and gender equality.

She teaches in various universities and executive education programmes on employment, international labour law and global governance of economic and labour policies.

Azita Berar Awad holds post graduate degrees in Development Economics and Political Science from the University of Geneva and the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva and is the author of numerous publications and policy reports.