16 June: The Ramsar Convention Standing Committee appointed Martha Rojas-Urrego as Secretary General to the Convention, taking over from outgoing Secretary General Christopher Briggs.

Rojas-Urrego (Colombia) will be the sixth Secretary General to the Convention. Her appointment was approved at the Standing Committee’s 52nd meeting, which took place in Gland, Switzerland, from 13-17 June 2016.

Rojas-Urrego previously led global advocacy at the development organization CARE International, and has served as its Acting Deputy Secretary General from 2014. She has also led policy work at the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and worked in various positions in government and international organizations, including the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and the National Parks Service of Colombia.

Announcing the appointment, the Ramsar Convention welcomed Rojas-Urrego and looked forward to working with her to advance the implementation of the Convention.

The Ramsar Convention is a multilateral environmental agreement (MEA) adopted in 1971 to provide the framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands. Under the Convention, more than 2,200 sites around the world, with an area of more than 200 million hectares, have been designated as wetlands of international importance. The Secretariat of the Convention is located in Gland, Switzerland. [Ramsar Convention Press Release] [Ramsar Convention Website]