Patrick A. McCarthy

Patrick Mc Carthy has dedicated himself to fostering international peace and security for almost 30 years, beginning his career in civil society and regional organisations and going on to work for the United Nations at headquarters and in the field. He is currently a UN Peace & Development Advisor (PDA) serving in Sri Lanka, where he helps to build national capacities for conflict prevention.

Before taking up his post in Sri Lanka in May 2024, Patrick was a PDA in The Gambia (2021-2024) and Chad (2018-2021) and, before that, he worked for 10 years with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), first as a Programme Specialist with its Bureau for Crisis Prevention & Recovery in Geneva (2008-2012) and then as a Policy Specialist with its Bureau for Policy & Programme Support in New York (2012-2018), spending much of this time seconded to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA) managing a cross-UN initiative on preventing the illicit arms trade.

Before joining the UN, Patrick worked for 11 years on conflict prevention, peacebuilding, and humanitarian arms control in international organisations (OSCE Mission in Kosovo), academic institutions (Graduate Institute of International & Development Studies, Geneva), NGOs (International Peace Bureau, Geneva; Irish Peace Institute, Limerick) and the private sector (World Economic Forum, Geneva).

Patrick holds a Ph.D. in Political & Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, as well as a master’s degree in International Studies and a bachelor’s degree in European Studies from the University of Limerick in Ireland, his home country. During his studies, he was an Erasmus scholar at the University of Konstanz in Germany (1989/90) and a visiting doctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley in the United States (2005/6).

Patrick is the author of "Hierarchy & Flexibility in World Politics," a book on the design of international institutions, and has published widely on international peace and security, including in the peer-reviewed journals 'Global Governance' and 'International Peacekeeping.'