Assistant Secretary-General, Assistant High Commissioner for Protection Office of the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres appointed Gillian Triggs of Australia as Assistant Secretary-General to serve as the Assistant High Commissioner for Protection, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Ms. Triggs, who recently served a 5-year term as President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, brings to the position several decades of professional experience as an academic, practicing lawyer, advocate and public policy expert. A barrister and solicitor of the Supreme Court of Victoria, she is currently Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne, President of the Asian Development Bank Administrative Tribunal, and holder of a number of other eminent appointments.

An expert in international law, Ms. Triggs has an extensive history of dedicated service to human rights and the refugee cause in Australia, the Asia-Pacific Region and globally. She was in international commercial law practice and also Professor of Law at the University of Melbourne. She then served as Director of the British Institute of International and Comparative Law, and as Dean and Challis Professor of International Law at the University of Sydney.

Ms. Triggs holds a bachelor’s degree and a doctorate in law from the University of Melbourne, and a master’s degree in law from Southern Methodist University, Texas.

Founder, Elevate Consulting Partners

Prabha is a leading human rights and discrimination lawyer with over 18 years of broad experience in a variety of areas from workplace culture reform to protecting the rights of asylum seekers and refugees. Prabha founded Elevate Consulting Partners, to support and strengthen the work of organisations committed to positive social change.

Prabha is an innovative changemaker renowned for her ability to challenge the status quo and develop achievable solutions to complex systemic problems. For twelve years Prabha held various senior positions at the Australian Human Rights Commission including Director of Human Rights Law and Policy and Director of Business and Human Rights. In 2021, she was the Director of Legal for the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces. As one of Australia’s foremost experts on immigration detention law and policy, in 2014, she led the landmark National Inquiry into Children in Detention.

In 2022, she consulted to the National Music Industry Review into sexual harm, sexual harassment and systemic discrimination. Most recently Prabha consulted to the independent cultural review of EY Oceania led by Elizabeth Broderick AO.

Prabha has been involved with the development of the new positive duty to eliminate sexual harassment and sex discrimination from inception to implementation. In 2020, she was a senior legal advisor to the Respect@Work National Inquiry and helped shape the positive duty regulatory scheme. Prabha also led the development of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s new positive duty guidance material and established the Commission’s positive duty compliance and enforcement team.

She holds a Bachelor of Laws (honours), and a Bachelor of Arts (Psychology) from the University of Adelaide.