Ms Celia Richardson

Ms. Celia Richardson is a freelance international affairs consultant and Executive-in-Residence Fellow at GCSP, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy. Throughout 2025, she advised the International Labour Organization on multilateral and UN system reforms and processes and partnership strategies. Between 2021 and 2024, Celia headed the UN Resident Coordinator’s Office in Palestine within the Office of the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO), where she spearheaded Gaza access negotiations, strategic and early recovery planning and donor engagement. 

Prior to this, Celia spent a decade working on peace and security issues in Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean, leading an integrated analysis unit in the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP), facilitating negotiations on military and defense matters, security guarantees and internal security at the height of UN-led Cyprus peace negotiations in 2016-18, and serving as Desk Officer for Cyprus, Türkiye, Greece, NATO and France in the UN’s Department of Political Affairs in New York in 2011-14. Between 2007 and 2011, Celia supported the UN’s conflict prevention efforts in West Africa, particularly in Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Togo, Mali, Niger and Cameroon/Nigeria. 

Celia also served with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), leading humanitarian assistance and protection activities in Indonesia and Guinea and supporting the ICRC’s humanitarian diplomacy in Geneva.  She also supported UNHCR’s emergency operation in Iraq in 2002-3.  An American and French national, Celia holds an MA in International Studies and Diplomacy from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African studies (SOAS) and a BA in Modern History and International Relations from the University of Reading in the UK.