Message by the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Albania, Ingrid Macdonald, on the International Day for Countering Hate Speech

Ms. Ingrid Macdonald (Australia) assumed the position of the UN Resident Coordinator in Albania in August 2025.

Ms. Macdonald has over 25 years of experience in development cooperation, humanitarian action and peacebuilding. She most recently served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Bosnia and Herzegovina, leading a team of eighteen United Nations Agencies, Funds and Programmes dedicated to accelerating sustainable development, human rights and peacebuilding across the country. Prior to that, she served as the Deputy Director of Operations for Asia and the Pacific in the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Head of OCHA’s Office in Ukraine and as a Director with the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Peer-2-Peer Team, supporting Humanitarian Coordinators and country teams strengthen their collective delivery of humanitarian response.

Before joining the United Nations, Ms. Macdonald worked with the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) as Representative and Director of Humanitarian Policy in Geneva, and held senior positions in Oslo, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Prior to NRC, she worked with Oxfam in Sudan and the Solomon Islands, as well as leading Oxfam’s Mining Ombudsman initiative, promoting corporate social responsibility and facilitating conflict resolution between communities and extractive companies across the world. She has also served as a Deputy Director with the New Zealand Defence Force and worked as a management consultant with the private sector in Australia.

Ms. Macdonald holds a PhD in history from the University of Toulouse II - Le Mirail, a graduate diploma in international law from the University of Melbourne, and bachelor’s degrees in law and geography from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

She has one daughter.