Rami Shehadeh is a senior political officer at the UN Department of Political Affairs where he has led the UN’s Syria team for the past six years. His ideas have often shaped the UN’s policy framework, in particular how to promote an approach that protects the welfare and rights of all citizens in post-conflict Syria and contributes to regional peace and stability. Shehadeh is refreshingly original and strategic. His unusual combination of being both principled and pragmatic makes him operationally effective as he strives to make a tangible impact. Shehadeh’s career has spanned three highly politicized contexts: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Lebanon (including the 2006 war), and Syria’s civil war, and has earned him recognition by his colleagues and UN leadership. Shehadeh’s contributions to some of the most intractable peace and security issues we face have had an outsized impact and speak to his potential to become a foreign policy leader to watch. He is a 1998 LLM alumnus of Pitt Law.
