Colleen Thouez

Colleen Thouez is Senior Training and Research Advisor at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) and a lecturer at American University's School of International Service.  She chairs the capacity development cluster for the World Bank’s major migration project (KNOMAD), and co-convenes the UN Global Migration Group’s Task Force on the same subject. Since 2015, she serves as advisor to the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Migration, Mr. Peter Sutherland, and has been coordinating his imminent report on migration governance with Columbia University’s Global Policy Initiative.

In 2014, she co-founded the Mayoral Forum on Mobility, Migration and Development, an annual international gathering of mayors supported by major migration-related organizations and the Government of Switzerland.
From 2004-2010, she headed UNITAR’s Office at the UN in New York, where she oversaw all strategic, operational and management functions, and was responsible for the training of 3,000 delegates annually in international law and multilateral diplomacy.
Prior to her appointments in New York, she served as Senior Policy Advisor for the Global Commission on International Migration, a Commission established under former UN Secretary-General Annan. For UNHCR, she also acted as the lead evaluator of the authoritative assessment of the CISCONF Follow-Up Process.

Since 2000, Dr. Thouez has taught migration and refugee law to government officials in most corners of the globe, and worked with the African Union, IOM, UNHCR, and the OSCE Stability Pact Task Force against Trafficking in Human Beings, among others.
Dr. Thouez also lectures at universities in Canada, the United States and Europe, and is the author of dozens of UN reports on migration, and on education, and has published journal articles and research papers, including “Shaping International Migration Policy: the Role of Regional Consultative Processes,” with Frédérique Channac, in Migration and Global Governance (Edward Elgar Publishing 2012).
On the board of the Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA), Dr. Thouez holds a doctorate in international law from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a masters degree in international relations from McGill University with multiple grants and fellowships in France, Canada and the US.