Ian Martin

Ian Martin is an English human rights activist/advisor and sometime United Nations official. His most recent UN assignment was as the Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Support Mission in Libya. From 2015 to 2018 he was Executive Director of Security Council Report. Martin was educated at Brentwood School in Brentwood, Essex, and graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, with first class honours in history and economics. Afterwards, he was a graduate student in development economics at Harvard University for a year. From 1969 to 1972, Martin worked for the Ford Foundation in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. In 1971 while in Dhaka, East Pakistan, he witnessed the beginning of Bangladesh’s War of Independence. After returning to the United Kingdom, Martin worked with the Redbridge Community Relations Council in London then served five years as the General Secretary of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants followed by three years as the General Secretary of the Fabian Society. He was a Labour Party Councillor in the London Borough of Redbridge from 1978 to 1982.