Dina Ionesco
Co-Director and Lecturer, Migration, Climate Change and Environment, Master Program Geneva Campus (MAMCE)
Dina IONESCO has over 25 years of work experience at international level, with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, UN Climate Change), the International Organization on Migration (IOM, UN Migration), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in the non-governmental sector, academia and as an independent consultant. Dina joined the UN Climate Change Secretariat in November 2021, as a manager in the Adaptation Division, with a focus non-regional groups, facilitating the partnership with the Climate Vulnerable Forum (CVF) and enhancing the focus on human mobility and other cross-cutting issues.
Over the past decade, Dina spearheaded the work on migration and climate change at IOM, establishing the first ever UN Migration, Environment and Climate Change focused Division and IOM’s first Environmental Sustainability Program. Her work contributed to the groundbreaking recognition of migration in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, in 2015, and to the important inclusion of environmental and climate issues in the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in 2018, with a focus on guiding innovative policy options to protect migrants. Dina’s work led to the operationalization of the migration and climate change nexus, through numerous programs and projects worldwide, including some multimillion projects, implemented with a wide range of donors and partners, and impacting policy makers, researchers, communities, and migrants. Dina initiated, produced and co-authored numerous publications and articles, including the flagship publication the Atlas of Environmental Migration, and was awarded in 2016 the distinction ‘Inspirational woman working to protect the environment’ at the initiative of UN Environment, the Geneva Environment Network and the Swiss Confederation.
A Romanian and French national, Dina is trained in Business Studies with a Post-Graduate Diploma from the London School of Economics (UK), in European Studies, with a Master degree from Sussex University (UK) and graduated from the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (France). Dina is passionate about human rights, the protection of nature, migration, gender, education and art; she regularly contributes to artistic projects and draws cartoons and children’s illustrations. Dina co-directs the new Webster Geneva Campus Campus Master program on Migration, Climate Change and the Environment (MAMCE) that started in Fall 2022.