Vincent Cochetel

Vincent Cochetel is a French official for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) since 1986 and as of 2016 heads the European office of the organization. Previously leading the organization's office in North Ossetia, he was kidnapped in January 1989 and held hostage until December the same year.

Obtaining a law degree from the University of Paris, Cochetel subsequently worked for the European Commission and the European Court of Human Rights before joing the UNHCR. He worked in Central and Eastern Europe, as well as in the Middle East, Western Africa and Caucasus.^[1]

As a UNHCR official in North Ossetia, he was kidnapped by tree armed men in Vladikavkaz on 29 January 1998.^[2] During the time of is imprisonment he was mostly in a cave, tied to his bed with one hand, received little food and got about 20 minutes of light every day.^[3]He was subject to interrogation and violence during the first days of captivity.^[4] The kidnappers demanded a ransom for Cochetel and negotiated with France and the United Nations, but according to the latter no ransom where ever paid. He was freed by Russian forces in December 1989.^[2]

He continued his work with UNHCR after his release, from 2002 in Geneva, and from 2005 as deputy director of Division of International Protection Services and Head of the Resettlement Service before becoming regional ambassador of the UNHCR for the United States and the Caribbean and later heading the European office.^[1] During the European migration crisis he serves as refugee coordinaton for the UNHCR and in that capacity epxpressed conncern that the European agreement with Turkey in Marc 2016 to return refugees who arrived in Greece to Turkey violated the ban against mass expulsion in the European Convention of Human Rights.^[5]

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