Jelena Pia-Comella is the Managing Coordinator of the Support Office of the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC) and Advisor to the Permanent Observer Mission of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie to the United Nations. Ms. Pia-Comella is also a lecturer, faculty member of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR) Global Diplomacy Initiative and a member of the Women Network on the Responsibility to Protect, Peace and Security.

Ms. Pia-Comella has over 20 years of experience in international relations and a deep knowledge of the United Nations system. Throughout her career, Ms. Pia-Comella has been true to her feminist principles and passion to promote women’s rights, strengthen women’s leadership, and support the work of activists in peace and security arena and gender justice.

Starting her career in 1996 as a diplomat representing Andorra at the United Nations, the United States and Canada she was part of the team that created the foreign policy of her country. Ms. Pia-Comella participated in the Conferences and negotiations that set new standards in international human rights and international humanitarian law such as the Rome Statute and the Responsibility to Protect norm. Ms. Pia-Comella was appointed Deputy Permanent Representative of Andorra to the United Nations in 2002 and served as chargé d’affaires a.i./Chief of Mission to the United States and Canada from 2001 to 2007.

Upon leaving the Andorran diplomatic service, Ms. Pia-Comella shifted her career to transfer her knowledge and skills to the service of activism. From January to June 2008, she was a consultant for the Center for Women’s Global Leadership and Women’s Environment and Development Organization to coordinate the Gender Equality Architecture Reform Campaign (GEAR) which led to the creation of UNWomen. Until July 2018, she was the Deputy Executive Director of the World Federalist Movement – Institute for Global Policy (WFM-IGP) setting the strategy and overseeing the work of the Organization including the secretariats of the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect and the Coalition for the International Criminal Court.

Ms. Pia-Comella holds a Master’s Degree in International Political Economy and Development from Fordham University, New York and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Fribourg University, Switzerland.