Mirjana Spoljaric Egger has served as president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) since October 2022. In this role, and as chair of both the Assembly and Assembly Council, Ms Spoljaric oversees ICRC’s humanitarian work globally, including its 17,000 staff working in 90 countries and an annual budget of approximately 1.8 billion CHF.
As the organisation’s chief diplomat, she steers ICRC’s external relations with states, parties to conflict and others who influence how wars are fought to promote respect for international humanitarian law and to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance to those in need.
In her first term as ICRC president, Ms Spoljaric transformed the ICRC’s approach to financial management and led a new institutional strategy focused on where the ICRC is uniquely placed to deliver. In September 2024, she launched, together with six states, the Global Initiative to galvanize political commitment to international humanitarian law – an exceptional effort to revive respect for the rules of war that now counts 120 states as official members.
Between 2018 and 2022, Ms Spoljaric served as the United Nations (UN) assistant secretary-general, assistant administrator of the UN Development Programme and director of the regional bureau for Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.
Ms Spoljaric previously had many years of distinguished service with the Swiss diplomatic corps. More recently, she served as ambassador and head of the Swiss foreign affairs department’s division for the UN and other international organizations, where she was instrumental in shaping coherent Swiss policies and priorities in the main UN organs and conferences and representing Switzerland in multilateral processes. She also had responsibility for International Geneva and Switzerland's host country policy.
Ms Spoljaric served in several assignments in the Swiss foreign affairs department in Bern and was counsellor and head of the political team at the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the UN in New York.
From 2010 to 2012, Ms Spoljaric was seconded to the Office of the Commissioner-General of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East as senior adviser; her remit included organizational development, management reforms and external relations.
Earlier in her career, Ms Spoljaric worked in the Swiss embassy in Cairo, Egypt, and was desk officer for International Finance Institutions at the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.
Ms Spoljaric studied philosophy, economics and international law at the Universities of Basel and Geneva and holds a master's degree. From 2004 to 2006 she was part-time lecturer on global governance at the University of Lucerne.
Ms Spoljaric speaks fluent English, French, German and Croatian. She is married and has a son and a daughter.
