Who is Giorgio Giacomelli, husband of Elisabetta Belloni

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The ambassador Elisabetta Belloni is the new head of the Italian secret services. The appointment of the Director General of the Security Information Department (DIS) came from the Prime Minister Mario Draghi replacing the prefect Gennaro Vecchione. Since 2016 she has been secretary general of the Farnesina and gives way to Ettore Sequi, head of the cabinet of Foreign Minister Luigi Di Maio.

The diplomat has been married for many years a Giorgio Giacomelli, who passed away on February 8, 2017. Born in Milan on January 25, 1930, the Paduan-born Ambassador was a great diplomat in Italy and in United Nations agencies. His blitz in Congo to free Italian missionaries in danger of their lives is famous.

Giacomelli graduated in Law from the University of Padua and subsequently studied at the University of Cambridge and at the Institute of Higher International Studies in Geneva.

He entered the Italian diplomatic service in 1956 and held positions in the embassies of France, Congo, Spain and India and subsequently served as ambassador to Mogadishu (1973-1976) and Damascus (1976-1980).

Among his many diplomatic posts, he represented Italy as ambassador to Somalia and Syria and was Commissioner General of UNWRA, the Palestinian Refugee Agency from 1985 to 1991.

But not only: he contributed to the draft of the first Italian Law on International Cooperation of 1971, assuming in 1981 the role of Director General for Emigration and Social Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and then, until October 1985, that as Director General of the Department for Cooperation and Development.

He was appointed Director-General of the United Nations Headquarters in Vienna, was deputy secretary general of the UN and first director of the UNCDP between 1991 and 1997 and, among other awards, received the French Legion of Honor and the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.

He has always shown great attention and sensitivity to the issues of development in the poorest countries and it was his diplomatic career that brought him closer to his wife, Elisabetta Belloni, first female secretary general of the foreign ministry. Graduated in political science at the Luiss, Belloni began his diplomatic career in 1985, taking back positions in the Italian embassies and in the permanent representations in Vienna and Bratislava, as well as in the general directorates of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.