Staff

Working Languages
Arabic, English, French and Spanish

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 71 48
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: awad@ilo.org

Mr. Ibrahim Awad has been serving as the Director of the International Migration Programme, International Labour Office (ILO) in Geneva, since July 2005. Previously, he was the Director of the ILO Subregional Office for North Africa based in Cairo. He had worked with the International Migration programme in the 1990s and early in that decade was in charge of an ILO-UNDP project on labour migration policies in Arab States.

Before joining the ILO, Mr. Awad held senior positions in several regional and United Nations organizations in Latin America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He also served as the Secretary of the Commission, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) based in Beirut.

He taught at the American University in Cairo (AUC), Political Science Department for some years. He has carried out wide-ranging research and published extensively on international labour migration, political economy, international relations, international organization, development, employment, human and labour rights and regional integration.

A graduate of the Faculty of Economics and Political Science, University of Cairo, he obtained his Doctorate in Political Science from the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Work Areas: Globalization and international labour migration; Migration and development; migration policies and programmes; regional integration and migration; Labour migration issues in the Middle East, Africa and the Mediterranean basin.

Working Language
English

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 64 97
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: wickramasekara@ilo.org

Mr. Piyasiri Wickramasekara, Senior Migration Specialist (Officer in Charge from January to June 2005), joined the ILO in 1985 as a senior development economist of the Asian Regional Team for Employment Promotion (ILO-ARTEP) and served in New Delhi from 1986 to 1993. From 1994, he functioned as a senior specialist in labour market policies in the ILO's East Asia Multidisciplinary Advisory Team and moved to the International Migration Programme, Geneva, in January 2001. Before joining the ILO, he served as a senior lecturer in economics at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and as senior researcher in the Agrarian Research and Training Institute and the People's Bank of Sri Lanka. He graduated from the University of Sri Lanka, Peradeniya, and obtained his Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Cambridge, UK. He has written widely on migration trends and issues in Asia, migration of skilled labour, remittances, rights of migrant workers and migration statistics.

Work areas: Globalization and Migration; Migration and development; Skilled migration and the brain drain; Asian labour migration; Irregular migration; Migration statistics including the ILM Database.

Working Languages
English, French, Spanish and Portuguese

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 80 91
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: taran@ilo.org

Mr. Patrick Taran is Senior Migration Specialist at the ILO International Migration Programme. He has 30 years of professional experience in the fields of migration, refugees and integration work, at local, national and global levels. Prior to joining the ILO in 2000, he held posts as Secretary for Migration at the World Council of Churches, Program Officer for the joint UN inter-agency International Migration Policy Program, and Director of Migrants Rights International (MRI). He convened the Steering Committee for the Global Campaign for ratification of the International Convention on migrants' rights in 1998 and served as its coordinator until 2002.

Previous to 1990, he directed local and national refugee and immigration programs in the USA. He has written extensively on topics of human rights of migrants, migration and globalization, and discrimination and integration issues. His university degree from State University of New York/Friends World College combined majors in Latin America Studies and Social Services.

Work areas: Discrimination against/Integration of migrant and immigrant workers; Human Rights of Migrants, Migration and Globalization, Regional Integration and Migration. Geographic focus: Europe; CIS countries, including Russian Federation, Caucasus and Central Asia.

Working Languages
French, English and Spanish

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 69 67
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: peyron@ilo.org

Ms. Céline Peyron Bista, assumed duties as a Specialist on International Migration in the International Migration Programme, ILO, Geneva from February 2008. Prior to this assignment, she worked as a Specialist on Social Protection and Migration from 2001 to 2006 at the International Training Centre of the ILO, Turin. She has considerable experience in designing and conducting capacity building activities and providing technical cooperation services in international labour migration. She is currently in charge of the implementation of a core project "Effective action for labour migration policies and practices" which aims at increasing capacity for effective governance of labour migration, promoting the ILO Multilateral Framework on Labour Migration and consolidating the global knowledge on international labour migration. She is also providing technical guidance to two major projects in Africa: "Social security for African migrant workers" and "Strengthening institutional capacities for a better governance of labour migration to the benefit of development in North and West Africa". Prior to joining the ILO, she was in charge of a non-governmental programme aiming to promote education and health in Bolivia.

She is graduated from the University of Paris-Sorbonne in Economics, Development and Social Policies.

Work areas: Social security for migrant workers, migration and development policies, labour migration issues in Africa.

Working Languages
English, French, Spanish and basic knowledge of Italian

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 78 54
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: mfontes@ilo.org

Ms. Gloria Moreno Fontes Chammartin has worked for the ILO Headquarters since 1993. In November 1997, she joined ILO's International Labour Migration Programme and has the responsibility for developing and managing research and technical cooperation in the fields of migrant women domestic workers, productive use of remittances, trafficking in migrant women and gender in migration. Her work includes research and activities on abusive and exploitative conditions of migrant workers. She is also guiding the effort to mainstream gender throughout MIGRANT's work. Previously, she worked for four years in the Active Labour Market Policies Branch of the Employment Department of the ILO on issues of wages, employment status flexibility, maquiladoras and trade liberalization in Mexico.

Work areas: Trafficking; Domestic Workers; Remittances; Gender and Migration.

Focal point: Latin America, Gender Bureau

Working Languages
English, French, German and passive Spanish

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 86 96
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: kuptsch@ilo.org

Ms. Christiane Kuptsch has been with the International Migration Programme since June 2008, as Senior Specialist in Migration Policy. Before, she held the position of Senior Research Officer at the ILO's International Institute for Labour Studies where she headed the work on labour migration since 2003 and also acted as Coordinator of Special Events since 2006. She joined the ILO in 1992, in the then Migration and Population Branch; worked on social protection issues - with the ILO-linked International Social Security Association - from 1995 to 2001; and was in charge of educational activities at the International Institute for Labour Studies for two years before going back to migration-related work.

She is a political scientist (University of Geneva and Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland), with a background in law (University of Hamburg, Germany). Her publications include works on social protection and a-typical forms of work; disability policies; social security privatization; the protection of migrant workers in irregular situations; the migration of students and trainees; and temporary foreign workers programmes. Her migration-related books are about migration policy ("Managing Labor Migration in the Twenty-first Century", co-authored with Philip L. Martin and Manolo I. Abella, 2006, Yale University Press); migrant recruitment agents ["Merchants of Labour" - (pdf 1,03 MB), edited volume, 2006, IILS/ILO] and the increasing competition for highly skilled migrants ["Competing for Global Talent" - (pdf 1,69 MB), edited volume, with Pang Eng Fong, 2006, IILS/ILO].

Work areas: Migration policy; temporary labour migration; internationalization of labour markets; global production, migration and social welfare.

Focal point: Research

Working Languages
English

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 63 51
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: khan@ilo.org

Mr. Azfar Khan has been working as the Senior Migration Policy Specialist in MIGRANT since June 2006. Before taking up his current position, he worked as Development Economist in the ILO's InFocus Programme on Socio-Economic Security. He joined the ILO in 1995 as a Specialist on Migration, Urbanisation and Population Distribution and later took on the Population and Poverty portfolio in the ILO's Labour and Population Programme. Prior to his ILO tenure, he was working as a Senior Lecturer in Economics and Development Studies at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) in The Hague, the Netherlands and was also the Convenor of the UNFPA's Global Programme of Training in Population and Development, which was based at the ISS. He did his under-graduate and post-graduate studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada and obtained a doctorate at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in the U.K.

Work areas: Globalization and Migration; Migration and Development; Migration Policy.

Working Languages
French, English and basic knowledge of Spanish

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 71 82
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: kaziaoul@ilo.org

Ms. Samia Kazi Aoul - Chaillou is a Social Security and International Migration Officer in charge of the implementation of a new project financed by the German government entitled Extending social security coverage to African migrant workers (MIGSEC).

She first joined the ILO in 2004 as an Associate Expert in Social Protection in Algiers' Office. As a Migration focal point she was involved in the implementation of a project financed by the European Union entitled Labour Migration for Integration and Development in Africa. In 2006-2007, she worked in Algeria as a project coordinator for CISP, an Italian NGO, on an AENEAS project. She was in charge of the coordination of research activities on the profile of undocumented migrants in Africa. Previously she worked in India as a program coordinator for PlaNet Finance and as a researcher for the Centre of Human Science (Delhi). Also, she worked two years as a researcher at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).

She is graduated from the University of Panthéon Sorbonne in Economics and Development and from the University du Québec at Montréal in Political Science, International Relations and Cooperation.

Work areas: Social protection of migrant workers, Irregular migration, Labour migration issues in Africa.

Working Languages
English, French, Spanish and Portuguese

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 74 30
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: dasilvaribeiro@ilo.org

Ms. Marie-Josée Da Silva Ribeiro is an International Migration Project Officer in charge of the implementation of a new project financed by the Spanish government entitled Improving institutional capacity to govern labour migration in North and West Africa.

She has been working in ILO since 2005 and held different positions as a legal officer and technical officer in social protection. She has worked notably on strategies and tools against social exclusion and poverty, for the Initiative on Informal Economy and on domestic workers legal issues.

She is graduated from the University Lumière Lyon II in International Human Rights Law, from the University Jean Moulin Lyon III in Political Sciences and International Relations and from University of Galway in International Peace Support Operations.

Work areas: Migration policies, Labour migration issues in Africa.

Working Languages
Spanish, English, Catalonian and basic knowledge of French

Contact details:
Tel: +41 22 799 65 87
Fax: +41 22 799 88 36
E-mail: correa@ilo.org

Ms. Olga Lucia Correa Pinillos is a Technical Officer on International Migration working at the ILO Headquarters since 2008. She works on project design, implementation and monitoring of different technical cooperation projects, such as the Spanish funded "Technical assistance to better regulate migratory flows from Senegal, Mauritania and Mali to Spain". In addition, she contributes to the International Migration Programme by analyzing data for the programme's development and research studies, drafting components of regional, country or sectoral analyses for reports and ILO publications.

Before working at the ILO, she coordinated a unit on educational cooperation in Colombia (Centro Colombo Americano) and assisted a latinamerican-catalonian centre of cultural cooperation for development in Spain (Casa Amèrica Catalunya). She graduated from the Universidad Externado de Colombia in Mass Communications and Journalism; holds a Master in International Relations from the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internationals and a post graduate diploma in Diversity Management: Citizenship and immigration from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Work areas: Circular and temporary migration schemes; Migration and development; Gender and migration; Migration and media, Latin America.