Born June 5th, 1965
Died August 6th, 2024
Aidan O’Leary, the Irish director of the World Health Organisation (WHO) polio eradication programme has died suddenly aged 59 while on holidays with his wife and two adult offspring in Portugal.
The Geneva-based international aid worker had a career in the Irish Army before holding key roles in the Organisation for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Palestinian refugees, the Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef) and then the WHO.
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O’Leary, who was renowned for his collaborative leadership style and his ability to grasp complex problems and find solutions to them, worked in war-torn parts of the world including Gaza, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Although he didn’t seek accolades or a high public profile, he was widely respected in the international aid community.
“Aidan was an outstanding humanitarian. He served tirelessly in the most difficult parts of the world to help the most vulnerable populations to survive and thrive and to end polio. He embodied the ideal of service and solidarity across peoples and borders,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said following his death.
“It was with the most remote and vulnerable people on the planet that Aidan worked and it is amongst those people that his legacy of work will be most cherished,” said President Michael D Higgins, who met O’Leary a number of times in Gaza.
O’Leary grew up in the north Dublin suburb of Beaumont, the eldest of four children of Pauline and Bill O’Leary, a Garda superintendent. Following his secondary school education at Ardscoil Rís in Marino, he joined the Irish Army in 1983.
He was a member of the 60th Cadet Class and served initially in the Supply and Transport Corps (which manages the logistics for military operations) in Cork and Dublin. As part of his military service, he took a degree in economics at University College Galway (now University of Galway) in 1986-1989, returning to his unit during academic holidays.
While continuing his work for the Defence Forces, he then completed a master’s in economics on a part-time basis at University College Dublin (UCD) and also took the exams for professional qualifications in chartered accountancy. Identified as a rising star within the Defence Forces, he was seconded to the Department of Finance in 1991 as a policy analyst for a year.
While studying at UCG, he met his wife-to-be, Karen Higgins, an engineering student from Galway. The couple married in 2002 and later settled in Salthill, Galway. When home from his overseas work, O’Leary loved life in Galway.
In July 1992 he was posted as a lieutenant to the planning and research section in the Defence Forces headquarters and later to the strategic planning office. “He quickly became the right-hand man of the chiefs of staff as a strategic planner during the period of public sector reform from 1992 to 2000,” says John Ging, a lifelong friend of O’Leary since their time together as cadets in the Irish Army. During this period, O’Leary also did two six-month tours to Lebanon as part of the UN peacekeeping force and a six-month tour of Yugoslavia as part of the European Union’s monitoring mission during the war there. He was promoted to captain during this period.
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In 2000, O’Leary was headhunted to work – initially on a secondment from the Defence Forces – for the Administration and Finance Department of the OSCE in Bosnia and Herzegovina. His job was to support human rights programmes, military stabilisation, democratisation and elections as part of the post-war recovery and reconstruction of a state.
In 2006 he was head-hunted again – this time to work as deputy to director John Ging of the UNRWA for Palestinian refugees in Gaza. “It was a tumultuous time of violence and anarchy, with tremendous upheaval in terms of politics and security,” says Ging. O’Leary led the education reform programme in charge of the 250 UNRWA schools in the region. Colleagues acknowledge O’Leary’s commitment to the children of Gaza and his belief that one could – and should – educate children even in the most difficult circumstances. And even though the security and economic situation deteriorated during that time, the academic results began to improve, which was testament to his leadership and ability.
O’Leary, a big man who was physically fit throughout his life, had a soft voice, understated manner and a compassionate approach to those he worked with and for. “He was a great motivator. He had the ability to lead without coercing people and he set ambitious standards and confounded everyone by exceeding them,” says Ging, who is now chief executive of the Famine Relief Fund.
In 2011, O’Leary moved to Afghanistan as head of the OCHA there. For the next few years he mobilised funding and co-ordinated humanitarian efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen.
His wife and children, who had lived with him while he worked in Bosnia and then in East Jerusalem during his time with the UNRWA, returned to live in Ireland so that the children could start their primary school education here. Although away from home for most of his working life, O’Leary drew strength from his love of his family and was immensely proud of them: everyone who worked with him knew them by name.
In 2015 O’Leary was appointed as the Unicef chief of the polio eradication programme in Pakistan – one of the last places in the world where polio is endemic. For the next few years, he returned to work as head of office for OCHA in Syria, Iraq and Yemen.
During this time he was head-hunted to work as director of the WHO polio eradication programme and moved to Geneva for the role in January 2021. He held the position until his death. One of his last tasks was the preparations for two rounds of polio vaccination campaigns in Gaza, targeting 600,000 children under the age of eight. The WHO is sending more than a million polio vaccines to Gaza to be administered in the coming weeks.
Aidan O’Leary is survived by his wife, Karen; his son, Darragh; his daughter, Eimear; his siblings, Art, Mary-Liz and Eoin; and his mother, Pauline. His father, Bill, predeceased him in 2013.