Mukesh Kapila

Mukesh Kapila CBE has worked extensively and advised in crisis and conflict management, humanitarian affairs, post-conflict recovery and development, and HIV and AIDS. Kapila is currently Under Secretary General of National Society and Knowledge Development at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).

Biography

Kapila's background is in medicine, public health and, subsequently, international development and humanitarian affairs. He has qualifications from the Universities of Oxford and London.

As a mid-level civil servant in 1994, he was part of the first British teams to see the aftermath of the Rwandan Genocide after entering Rwandan Patriotic Front-controlled Kigali.

He was the Deputy Director of the National UK AIDS programme during the 1990s.

He was Head of Conflict and Humanitarian Affairs unit of the British Department for International Development from 1998 to 2002. From 2002-2003, Kapila was a Special Adviser to the United Nations, first to the Special Representative of the Secretary General in Afghanistan and then to the High Commissioner for Human Rights. In 2003-2004 Kapila was the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, and the UN Development Program Resident Representative for the Sudan.

While stationed in Sudan, he was outspoken in his condemnation of the human rights abuses being committed in the western region of Darfur. His activism began...
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