Full Name
Diego Beltrand
Job Title
Regional Director a.i. for North and Central America and the Caribbean
Current Employer
International Organization for Migration (IOM)
Speaker Bio
Diego Beltrand was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1963. He is a professional in Law with a degree of State Attorney from Universidad de la República in Montevideo, Uruguay (UDELAR); holds a Master's in International Relations from Universidad Centroamericana de Nicaragua (UCA) and a Executive Master in International Business and Policies Formulation from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (HEI) in Geneva, Switzerland.
With over 30 years of international experience, he has led programs and projects on technical cooperation on migration management and governance focused on public policies on Migrants’ Human Rights. He has also been responsible of programs in humanitarian assistance and reconstruction in emergency situations in cases of conflict and natural disasters. He worked for the Organization of American States (OAS) in Nicaragua.
Mr. Beltrand joined IOM in 1997 and has carried out several duties thereafter in Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Switzerland and Argentina. Between 2012 and 2019, he was IOM’s Regional Director for South America. The Regional Office for South America supports and leads IOM activities in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. Under this position, he also served in the Technical Secretariat of the South American Conference on Migration (SACM).
In November 2019 he was appointed as the Director General’s Special Envoy for the Regional Response to the Venezuela Situation, based in Panama City. Mr. Beltrand is responsible for political liaison, implementation, oversight of the response and fundraising under the framework of the Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan (RMRP), as well other activities related to IOM´s response. He also co-chairs the Regional Inter-Agency Coordination Platform together with UNHCR.
As of February 2024, he is also serving as Ad Interim Regional Director for North and Central America and the Caribbean.
Diego Beltrand