New York/The Hague - Parliamentarians for Global Action (PGA) is delighted to announce that Ms. Mónica Adame has been elected Secretary-General for the term 2023-2025. Ms. Adame was elected unanimously by the PGA Board in Buenos Aires, Argentina on November 3rd, 2022 after a thorough, merit-based and publicly-announced selection process.

Originally from Mexico City, Mexico, Ms. Adame joined PGA in 2011 and has extensive experience in fundraising, leading and mentoring team members, and managing and executing programs and campaigns underpinned by international human rights law. In 2013, her entrepreneurial and forward-looking vision enabled PGA to launch and build its Global Parliamentary Campaign on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI Campaign), making PGA the first parliamentary network addressing issues of equality and non-discrimination based on SOGI.

Ms. Adame’s ability to build trust and long-standing partnerships with member-parliamentarians, civil society representatives, and funders has raised PGA’s visibility around the world and strengthened the organization’s goal of becoming the ‘go-to’ parliamentary partner on human rights and equality.

• Hon. Naveed Qamar, MP

  Pakistan

Mónica has successfully led PGA’s Gender, Equality and Inclusion Program during the last decade demonstrating her skills as an adept communicator and advocate on sensitive issues, bridging the gap between stakeholders on all sides of the conversation with respect and empathy. I am certain she will continue strengthening PGA’s role as a key convener for parliamentarians around the world. PGA’s President Hon. Syed Naveed Qamar, MP (Pakistan)

• Ms. Petra Bayr, MP

  Austria

We are excited about Mónica taking over as Secretary-General. Through the years, she has shown her dedication to the values of the organization, her ability to create innovative content, and to understand personnel management and fundraising, while also grasping the realities faced by, and the interests that members of Parliament have. I’m very much looking forward to working with Mónica in her new capacity as I did in her previous one, and I’m convinced that her passion and leadership will make PGA an organization that will not only make a difference for many MPs who are dedicated to human rights, democracy, and equality, but that through our work together, we will also make a difference for the well-being of the constituents we serve globally. PGA's Treasurer Ms. Petra Bayr, MP (Austria)

• Hon. Charles Chauvel, MP

  New Zealand

I was a member of the Parliament of New Zealand - and of PGA - between 2006 and 2013. After that, for 9 years I led the team at the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) supporting the delivery of that organization’s global parliamentary development work in some 60 countries. That work can be effective only when it is implemented in partnership with national parliaments and with their global, thematic, and regional organizations and associations. PGA - and Director Mónica Adame in particular - were at all times a trusted and well-regarded partner in this work. The quality of that partnership is exemplified by our joint handbook for parliamentarians on the rights and inclusion of LGBTI people - now in its second edition due to popular demand and for which she was the PGA focal point.

I wish the new SG well in her role and am confident that her integrity and expertise will see the organization go from strength to strength.

Charles Chauvel, former MP (New Zealand)

Prior to joining PGA, Ms. Adame worked with the Mexican Government in its Consulates in San Diego, California and New York, New York. She holds a Master of International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), with a concentration on human rights, and a Bachelor of Arts on International Relations from Iberoamericana University in her native Mexico City. She completed the Senior Leaders Program for Nonprofit Professionals at Columbia Business School in 2022.

Over the last nine years, Dr. David Donat Cattin – a legal scholar with leading scientific publications on victims’ rights and other subjects of International Criminal Law and academic affiliations with NYU and University of Verona – led the organization as PGA’s Secretary-General reaching his statutory tenure after three consecutive elections by the PGA Board. As a human rights’ activist with profound commitment to PGA’s vision of “a Rules Based International Order”, Dr. Donat Cattin structured the work of the organization into a set of concrete campaigns targeting results and changes as tangible as the ratification and domestic implementation of treaties, legislative and policy reforms, and strategic alliances with civil society, IGOs and other principled stakeholders. Between 2014 and 2022, PGA evolved as the largest human rights’ NGO for individual Parliamentarians while maintaining a global leadership role on key priorities like international and domestic justice for international crimes (including the crime of aggression), equality and inclusion, disarmament and non-proliferation, the abolition of the death penalty, and democratic renewal. Dr. Donat Cattin will continue to support the new head of PGA’s secretariat Mónica Adame as Outgoing-SG in a transition that will end on 31 March 2023.

Ms. Adame becomes PGA’s fifth Secretary-General in the organization’s 44-year history following her predecessors Dr. David Donat Cattin (Italy), Ms. Shazia Rafi (Pakistan), and Mr. Nick Dunlop and Dr. Kennedy Graham (both from New Zealand).