David M. Malone

David M. Malone
David M. Malone, Rector (left) shaking hands with Ernest Aryeetey (right), Vice Chancellor, University of Ghana
Rector of United Nations University (UNU)
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 March 2013
Deputy	Taikan Oki, Senior Vice-Rector, UNU
Preceded by	Konrad Osterwalder
Secretary-General	Ban Ki-moon

David M. Malone, born in 1954, is a Canadian author on international security and development, as well as a career diplomat. He is a former president of the International Peace Institute, and a frequently quoted expert on international affairs, especially on Indian Foreign Policy and the work of the UN Security Council. He became president of the International Development Research Centre in 2008 and served until 2013. On 1 March 2013, he took up the position of UN Under-Secretary-General, Rector of the United Nations University, headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.

He holds a degree from l’École des Hautes Études Commerciales (Montreal); studied at the American University of Cairo; holds an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government; and earned a DPhil in International Relations from Oxford University.

Malone served as a Canadian Ambassador to the UN from 1992 to 1994, after representing Canada on the UN's Economic and Social Council, 1990-92. He was appointed as the Canadian High Commissioner to India, and the non-resident Ambassador to Nepal and Bhutan, 2006-2008.

From 1998 until 2004, when Terje Rød-Larsen took over, he was the president of the International Peace Institute, then known as the International Peace Academy. He has spoken at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Malone was president of the International Development Research Centre, a Canadian crown corporation that supports evidence-based and policy relevant research into healthier, more equitable, and more prosperous societies in the global south, 2008-2013, and became president in July 2008.

Malone has a long-term interest in Haiti, which he visited as part of UN delegations and as a representative of human rights groups. His book Decision-Making in the UN Security Council: The Case of Haiti is "an account of the struggle to address the Haiti crisis from 1990 to 1998." A former supporter of president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, he was highly critical of the international pressure that resulted in Aristide's ousting, singling out the United States, France, and Canada in an 2004 op-ed piece published in the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. In an interview with the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, he expressed mixed optimism that a lengthy (15 to 20 years) international involvement might bring about positive change, but lamented the lack of interest in "Paris, Washington, or even Ottawa" in a long-term strategy. In an op-ed piece in The New York Times written with Kirsti Samuels (also of the International Peace Institute) published in July 2004, he advocated an international commitment to long-term nation-building for Haiti.