Salil Shetty, an Indian national, has been appointed to be Amnesty International’s next Secretary General. He will assume charge from Irene Khan in June 2010. Mr Shetty has earlier worked with United Nations’ Millennium Campaign and ActionAid.

He joined ActionAid - a leading international development NGO - in 1985 and played a leading role in more than 30 programmes in Africa, Asia and across other regions, and made an exceptional contribution to its growth and development. Here he worked initially in field programmes in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa and later in the fundraising and advocacy programmes in Europe and the USA.

As Chief Executive of ActionAid, he played a key role in reorienting the organization’s focus on advocacy at the grassroots and policy-making levels. Under his leadership ActionAid reached 9 million of the world’s poor in 2003, with support from 2,000 civil society partners worldwide.

In October 2003, he joined the United Nations as Director of the Millennium Campaign after two decades of experience and reputation as a recognized civil society leader. There he played a pivotal role in building up the global advocacy campaign for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in over 50 countries. This powerful anti-poverty campaign is a unique global partnership of the UN with NGOs, trade unions, faith groups, local authorities and the media, calling for greater accountability from governments in the fight against hunger, disease and illiteracy.

Mr. Shetty serves on the boards of The Institute of Development Studies, Sussex, and The Overseas Development Institute, London, an Italian-based international non-governmental organization (Azione Aiuto), and is a member of the Advisory Council of the American-Indian Foundation, New York. He also serves on the Global Leadership Council of the Technology Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California. Mr. Shetty was also a representative for the Joint Facilitation Committee for Civil Society and the World Bank.

He has earned a distinction in Master of Science in social policy and planning from the London School of Economics and a Master’s in business administration from the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. He studied advanced accounting and cost accounting during graduation at Bangalore University.