Mr Harry Richard Leefe is an Executive-in-Residence within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP.
Harry Leefe, b. 1955 ( UNHCR 1993-2018). As a staff member of UNHCR he carried out a number of field assignments, emergency refugee and natural disaster response, emergency logistics, military liaison, peace building and reconstruction. He was also involved in refugee repatriation and closure of Internally Displaced Person (IDP) camps. He worked in many countries of Africa, parts of Asia and the Balkans. During his career he was responsible for UNHCR emergency logistic and airlift response operations for Rwanda 1994, Liberia 1995, Uganda 1997 (Manager of the UNHCR “Interahamwe” airlift operation), Sierra Leone 1997 (Coordinator for repatriation of refugees from Liberia on Sierra Leone Navy ships), Kosovo 1999 (Senior Logistics Officer FYROM & Kosovo), Somalia 2005 (UNHCR member of the Tsunami UN Response Team), and Lebanon 2006 (UNHCR focal point in the UN Joint Logistics Unit).
His career with UNHCR began in 1993 as Senior Logistics Officer based in Geneva Headquarters, responsible for global logistics operations and emergency response. He was posted to Sarajevo BiH in 1998 as Senior Military Liaison Officer to NATO/SFOR, acting Deputy Chief of Mission BiH (1999 -2000) and then Head of the Southern Regional Office in Mostar BiH (2000 -2003). Following his posting in BiH, he was attached to the Peace Building, Partnership and Livelihoods Section, in the Division of Operational Support in Geneva (2004 – 2007) and acted as focal point for mine action, military liaison and training and emergency response. In February 2007, he was posted for two years to Gulu Uganda, as Head of Sub Office and Internally Displaced Persons Coordinator (IDP) for UNHCR in Northern Uganda, overseeing the UNHCR operations in seven districts where there were 109 IDP camps. He managed a programme of IDP camp closure and return of IDP’s to their villages of origin in the region. He was posted to Chad in 2009 at the request of the Representative to assist the refugee operation in establishing deep field office and accommodation compounds in Eastern and South East Chad, close to the refugee camps and the Sudan and Central African Republic borders. Following the Chad operation, he was requested in 2010 to establish the UNHCR Fleet Management Project, (Supply Management Service, Budapest), with the objective of modernizing the UNHCR global light vehicle fleet, including new GPS tracking technology. His last posting (2012 -2018) was the Global Staff Accommodation Manager based in HQ Geneva (Staff Health and Welfare Service), responsible for ensuring minimum standards of living and working conditions for UNHCR staff working in remote and insecure locations globally.