Robert Piper is a Senior Fellow at UNU-CPR.
Robert Piper is an Australian who has served the UN for 35 years in various capacities and lead UN teams across four continents. He was most recently the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advisor on Solutions for Internal Displacement from 2022-2024.
Mr. Piper served in multiple humanitarian, international development and peacebuilding leadership positions within the United Nations. He lead the roll-out of SG Guterres’ historic 2018 reforms to the UN development system as inaugural head (Assistant Secretary General) for the newly-minted Development Coordination Office and manager of the UN’s global network of 131 country Resident Coordinators. He served as Humanitarian Coordinator for the occupied Palestinian Territories and Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. As Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the food crisis in the Sahel region and as head of the UN system in Nepal. Mr. Piper also served as Chief of Staff to former-US President Clinton for two years in President Clinton’s capacity as the UN's Special Envoy coordinating the recovery effort after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami.
Mr. Piper has been at the forefront of many reforms at the UN over a 35 year career. From the largest (up to that time) UN-private sector-music industry collaboration as UN manager of NetAid in 1999, to leading implementation of the system-wide 2018 reforms aimed at ‘repositioning the UN development system’, to standing-up the unprecedented €500 million MDG Fund in 2007. Most recently, Mr. Piper’s work on internal displacement solutions has introduced major reforms to the way in which the UN understands and responds to a phenomenon affecting over 80 million people today. Mr. Piper has brought 20 years of hands-on experience working in UN country teams at the national level to these global reform efforts, bridging theory and practice.
Mr. Piper has a Bachelor of Arts degree with honours in political science from the Australian National University. He was a Yale University World Fellow in 2004 and is bilingual in English and French.