Gréta Gunnarsdóttir

Thematic expertise:  Human rights, gender equality

Geographic expertise: Israel/Palestine

Languages:  English

Ambassador Gréta Gunnarsdóttir is currently the Director of the UNRWA Representative Office in New York.  She has focused on multilateral affairs through most of her career in the Icelandic Foreign Service since 1988 (UN, EU/EEA, OSCE and NATO), with further experience from within the multilateral system (OSCE/ODIHR in Warsaw, NATO HQ and UNRWA in New York and East-Jerusalem).  As Permanent Representative of Iceland to the UN 2011-2015, she was appointed along with colleagues from Indonesia and Tunisia to facilitate the intergovernmental review process of the human rights treaty bodies. This initially very divisive process resulted in a consensus resolution providing for systemic changes designed to make the treaty bodies more effective. With her colleague from Suriname, she initiated the first Barbershop conference, designed to engage men for gender equality.  Greta has served as Ambassador to Austria and the OSCE and International Organizations in Vienna, as the Political Director at the MFA in Reykjavik and as Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN in New York and the EU in Brussels.