Irina Barba

Member of the Board

Irina Barba is Minister of the Foreign Service and currently serves as Director of Environment and Sustainable Development at Ecuador’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility. She is the political focal point for several multilateral environmental agreements.

Her diplomatic career includes postings in Japan, Turkey, Paraguay, and most recently at Ecuador’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, where she led on legal issues, ocean and maritime law, sustainable development, environmental matters, peacebuilding, and African dossiers on the Security Council agenda. From April to December 2025, she was Ecuador’s Political Coordinator during the country’s non-permanent membership on the UN Security Council (2023–2024).

She also represented Latin America and the Caribbean (GRULAC) in 2020–2021 on the Facilitative Working Group of the Local Communities and Indigenous Peoples Platform under the UNFCCC.

Since 1999, she has held various positions at the Ministry in Quito, including in Passport Services, Protocol, Multilateral Policy, Human Resources, Asia and Oceania, and Environment and Sustainable Development.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in Multilingual International Business from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador and a master’s in Diplomacy and European and International Relations from the University of Auvergne in France.