Ambassador Leonardo Bencini
Leonardo Bencini is an Italian diplomat. He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Italy in 1993. He has served in Rome, Rio de Janeiro, Oslo, Moscow, St. Petersburg and now Geneva. He has dealt with United Nations issues at various stages of his career – from human rights to peacekeeping and peacebuilding, from UN reform to sustainable development. Lastly (2019-2022), he was in charge of Italy’s contribution to the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Besides Italian, he speaks French, Portuguese and Russian. He is Officer OMRI (Order of Merit of the Italian Republic). Currently he is the Permanent Representative of Italy to the Conference on Disarmament. He was the President of the ninth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Conventions (BWC), which took place in Geneva from 28 November to 16 December 2022.
He is married and has a daughter.