Deputy chief defeats boss to become next head of U.N. migration agency

GENEVA (AN) — The next head of the International Organization for Migration will be Amy Pope, an American lawyer already serving as the agency's deputy chief in charge of management and reform.

Pope, with the backing of U.S. President Joe Biden, defeated her boss, IOM Director General António Vitorino, a Portuguese lawyer, socialist and veteran politician with the backing of the European Union, during the IOM Council's 6th Special Session, IOM announced on Monday.

Under IOM’s Constitution, the election for director general requires a two-thirds majority vote of the 175-member Council by secret ballot, though just 171 were registered to vote. Vitorino had withdrawn from the race after the first round in the face of a U.S. campaign that included Biden's endorsement a week earlier.

Pope will become the first woman to serve as director general of the agency also known as U.N. Migration, when she begins her new post at the start of October, after Vitorino's five-year term ends. Vitorino is the tenth director general of the Geneva-based IOM since 1954.

"Humbled and honored to be chosen as the next director general of U.N. Migration," Pope said on Twitter. "I am ready to work with ALL our member states and global partners to unleash the opportunities provided by effective, orderly and humane migration."

The result was a 180-degree pivot from the animosity toward the United States under the former Trump administration that swept Vitorino into power in 2018.

Vitorino's election marked only the second time in a half-century that the leading international organization for migration was not led by an American, and served as a prominent sign of the global backlash against former U.S. President Donald Trump's policies on migration, economy and trade.

Vitorino, a former E.U. commissioner for justice and home affairs , had edged out the U.S. candidate in an apparent repudiation of Trump's "America First" brand of anti-immigrant populism. Vitorino also is an ally of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister who began his political career as a socialist.

Only once before Vitorino's term had the organization founded in 1951 to resettle refugees from Europe in the wake of World War II not been run by an American.

U.S. priority for IOM: more effective and inclusive

Before IOM, the International Refugee Organization, or IRO, helped the postwar flood of refugees. The IRO, founded in 1946, joined the U.N. system in 1948 but shuttered operations in 1952 when it was replaced by the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

IOM signed a cooperation agreement with the United Nations in 1996 and the U.N. General Assembly voted to accept IOM as a UN-related organization in 2016. Now commonly referred to as the U.N. migration organization, IOM has 165 member nations and eight observer nations. It employs some 10,000 staffers among more than 150 countries.

Pope joined IOM in Sept. 2021 as the U.N. agency's deputy director general for management and reform. In that post, she helped improve field deliveries and internal justice systems, and boosted coordination within the U.N. system.

Before that she held a series of White House jobs that included serving as Biden's senior advisor on migration and as a deputy assistant to the president and deputy homeland security advisor.

Pope will lead an agency with almost 19,000 staff and 560 field offices in 171 countries that are supposed to work for "humane and orderly migration" that benefits all migrants and society.

Her election "reflects a broad endorsement by member states of her vision to keep people at the heart of IOM’s mission, while implementing key governance and budget reforms to ensure IOM is prepared to meet the challenges it faces," said U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

"She also becomes the first woman to lead this critical organization in its more than 70-year-old history," he added, noting that the United States is the organization's largest bilateral donor and will work with her "to implement the critical reforms necessary to create a more effective, inclusive IOM."