Secretary-General Appoints Major General Michael Beary of Ireland Head, United Nations Mission to Support Hudaydah Agreement
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres today announced the appointment of Major General (retired) Michael Beary of Ireland as Head of the United Nations Mission to Support the Hudaydah Agreement (UNMHA) and Chair of the Redeployment Coordination Committee.
Major General (retired) Beary succeeds Lieutenant General (retired) Abhijit Guha of India to whom the Secretary-General is grateful for his dedicated and exemplary service.
Major General Beary has had a long career since joining the Irish Army as an Infantry Corps Officer in 1975, serving from 2016 to 2018 as Head of Mission and Force Commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) having previously served there in 1982, 1989 and 1994-95. He further served as General Officer commanding Second Brigade Irish Defence Forces from 2013 to 2016 with a wide variety of assignments, holding command and staff officer appointments, including at the unit, brigade and defence force headquarters levels.
He spent 10 years on overseas deployments, including in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia and Uganda. From 2011 to 2013, he commanded the European Union military training mission in Somalia, and in 2004, he was the Liaison Team Leader with the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. He was previously Director of Training for the Irish Defence Forces and Commandant of the Military College. Since his retirement from the Irish Army in 2018, General Beary has lectured at universities in Ireland, authored publications on international peacekeeping, while also having led United Nations Boards of Inquiry in Africa.
Major General Beary holds a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Business Studies and a Master of Science in national security strategy. He is a graduate of the Command and Staff School of the Irish Defence Forces, University College Galway, the Smurfit Business School University College Dublin and the National War College at the National Defence University in Washington, D.C.