Global Security
Mass Gatherings and Health Emergencies
At the WHO, Maurizio founded and led the Mass Gatherings Program - an innovative initiative to assess and manage health risks during large-scale events. He provided high-level risk assessment and coordination strategies for events such as the Olympic Games (Athens, Torino, Vancouver, Beijing, London), the Hajj, and the FIFA World Cups.
His team’s methodologies helped shape global health protocols which are now used by sport organisations and health agencies - to secure millions of participants while balancing public health and medical, logistical and geopolitical complexity - and implemented by governments during international crises, including pandemic events.
Field Activities & Strategic Crisis Response
With extensive field experience, including conflict zones and post-disaster settings, Maurizio has provided direct strategic guidance to humanitarian missions, outbreaks and public health operations.
From deployment of international health teams during pandemic events such as the avian flu, the H1N1 pandemic or the Ebola outbreaks, to overseeing biosecurity protocols in volatile regions, he has worked on the ground to align strategy with execution.
His missions often involved real-time coordination between WHO and other UN agencies or national governments, ensuring that technical operations were grounded in geopolitical and cultural awareness.
Examples of this can be found in his participation as a UN Inspector during the UNMOVIC’s verification of Iraq weapons of mass destruction under the UNSC resolutions, in 2003...
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... as well as his later nomination to lead the WHO component of UN Inspectors as for the UNSC mission to Syria in 2013, to investigate the alleged use of chemical weapons on civilians, and as senior scientific adviser of the follow up OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism on Syria (UNSC resolution 2235/2015).
It is for these reasons that he was later called upon to form the WHO Novel Coronavirus-19 Mass Gatherings Expert Group, a gathering of specialists who, through various conferences and meetings, were able to set the guidelines which the UN and the rest of the world later used in their reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic.
International Policy, CBRN, and Disarmament Diplomacy
Having previously served as a delegate at multiple sessions of Weapon Conventions negotiations - both Biological and Chemical - of the Conference of Disarmament, Maurizio Barbeschi worked as a Senior Policy Officer of the Verification Division of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW, Nobel Peace Prize 2013). As Senior Policy Officer, he contributed to the development of the protocols for challenge inspections, investigations of alleged use of chemical weapons and verification.
Due to his previous experience with both the OPCW and his position in the WHO, Maurizio’s ability to move between technical, diplomatic, and operational domains positioned him as a key liaison between public health and international security agencies.
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Barbeschi played an active role in multilateral disarmament efforts as a technical WHO co-lead, particularly when the 2020 UN BioRisk Working Group was formed to enhance better cohesion among internal UN branches and with external unaffiliated agencies, thus ensuring more effective responses against biorisks, including COVID-19.