H.E. Mr. Filipo Tarakinikini hails from the uplands of Delailasakau, situated in the Naitasiri province of Fiji. He is married and has four children and two grandchildren.
Prior to his appointment, Mr. Tarakinikini held several positions at the United Nations Department for Safety and Security (UNDSS), including as Chief of the Middle East and North Africa Section, beginning in 2018, where he led United Nations inter-agency assessment missions to countries, including Iraq and Syria. He also facilitated the establishment of monitoring missions in Yemen, Iraq and Libya and led various field assistance missions. In 2022, he was part of the strategic assessment team for the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).
Beginning in 2003, he was UNDSS’s Chief Security Advisor in Jerusalem, as well as in Kathmandu, Nepal, from 2006 to 2008. From 2008 to 2018, he served in numerous United Nations integrated assessment missions, programme working groups, restructuring and redeployments and technical assessment missions.
From 1979 to 2002, he served in the Fiji Military Forces, including eight years in United Nations peacekeeping missions, among them, south Lebanon and the Multinational Force in Sinai, Egypt. During that period, he held a variety of positions, including Aide de camp, Adjutant, Senior Plans Officer and Fiji’s battalion commander in the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL). During his country’s national crisis in 2002, he was the chief military spokesperson and lead military negotiator.
Mr. Tarakinikini trained at the senior military Command and Staff College in Camerley in 1992 and at the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in 1980, both in the United Kingdom.