Francesco Pisano

Mr. Francesco Pisano is an expert in international affairs with a professional background in humanitarian affairs, risk management, and research on knowledge systems. He has studied international relations with a specialisation in diplomatic studies and conflict resolution, and law with a focus on public international law.

He briefly served with the Italian Foreign Office in 1988-89 as a junior expert in development cooperation and was in the executive office of the Director-General of Italy’s Development Cooperation. After his studies he worked as a researcher on strategic studies, among which the definition of measures for the verification of conventional disarmament treaties in Europe as well as the strategic consequences of the dislocation of the Soviet Union.

From 1991 to 1993 he worked in business development in Africa and Asia for a large multinational company in the areas of integrated risk management and environmental monitoring systems. In 1993 he joined the United Nations where he took various positions of increasing responsibility with the UN Department of Humanitarian Affairs (DHA), its Division for Disaster Mitigation, and was part of the initial group of professionals who developed the UN strategy for disaster risk reduction and the early developments of United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). He served as Senior Officer under Under-Secretaries-General De Mello, Oshima and Egeland until 2004. From 2005 until 2007 he co-led the partnership between the UN and the European Space Agency to develop earth observation applications for the UN humanitarian agencies. He was head of UNOSAT (the Operational Satellite Applications Programme) from 2007 to 2012 and then Director of Research, Technology Applications and Knowledge Systems at the UN Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) until 2015. Since 2016 he leads the UN Library Geneva, a centre for research and knowledge exchange established in 1919, and is the head of the Cultural Activity Programme of UN Geneva, a space dedicated to cultural diplomacy and international outreach.