Robyn Groves is the Coordinator of the protection of civilians in armed conflict unit, within the Policy and Studies Development Branch of OCHA, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Robyn’s career with the United Nations began in 1998 with UNHCR, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, where she served as a Regional Public Information specialist covering Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. She served all over South East Asia during the Indo-Chinese boat people crisis, and in Thailand and Cambodia during the repatriation of Cambodian refugees.

Robyn has served UNHCR in a number of humanitarian and emergency operations and duty stations, including Iran during the Kurdish crisis, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Angola, Kenya and the former Yugoslavia.

From 1995-1998, she served as Regional Communications Director for the UNHCR Special Envoy for the former Yugoslavia, based in Sarajevo.

From 1998 – 2002, Robyn was the External Relations Director for the UNHCR Office to the United Nations in New York.  Her role included political responsibility for the Balkans during the Kosovo crisis and for SE Asia during the conflict in East Timor.

In 1999 Robyn participated in a three-person mission of the Secretary General to negotiate humanitarian access in Kosovo during the NATO campaign.  Later that year, she represented UNHCR on an interagency humanitarian needs assessment mission to East Timor in the early days of the INTERFET deployment.

From 2001 – 2 Robyn was seconded to the UN Department of Peacekeeping in New York, where she was responsible for editing a Handbook on Multi-dimensional Peacekeeping, the first to ever include inputs from the civilian agencies. The Handbook is to be published in September 2003.

In late 2002, she was seconded to OCHA, to coordinate the new protection of civilians in armed conflict unit, and was involved in the preparation of the report of the Secretary General on the protection of civilians in armed conflict of November 2002. 

Robyn is an Australian. She has produced two television documentaries, one on Laotian refugees returning to their country, and another on abandoned Cambodian refugee children. She is a former academic with a PhD in Comparative Literature.