Mr. Vasco Malta is the Head of Office of IOM Portugal. He has a degree in Law and a L.LM. in European Law in a Global Context, by Católica Scholl of Law. He also successfully completed the course “Strategic Thinking and Management” from the Harvard Business Publishing School in 2021. He is a lawyer since 2005, and started his work in the human rights area within the High Commissioner for Migration and Intercultural Dialogue, in Portugal, in 2009. He was also legal adviser to the Commission for Equality and Against Racial Discrimination and was part of the Portuguese National Commission for Human Rights. He was appointed by the Portuguese Government as a National Liaison Officer to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights in 2009, and since 2014 until 2018, Mr. Malta worked in the Agency based in Austria as a National Expert, coordinating the National Liaison Officers network, the National Parliaments Focal Points network, the Working Party on Hate Crime project, among other projects. In 1 February of 2018 he was appointed as Deputy of the High Commissioner for Migration in Portugal, and in 1 March 2019, as Head of Migration Policy, International Relations, Enrolment of Migrants of the High Commissioner for Migration. In November 2019 he was appointed as Deputy of the Portuguese Minister of Home Affairs, with the areas of migration, refugees, and traffic of human beings. In November 2020, after an international selection process, he was appointed as Head of Mission of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) (United Nations Migration Agency) in Portugal. In February 2024, he was awarded by the Brazilian Government/President of Brazil with the Order of Rio Branco award, in the rank of Commander, for the “services provided in favour of migrants over the last 15 years”. He is often a guest speaker at various national and international conferences, and he is part of the diplomatic corps accredited in Portugal.