The Permanent Representative of Italy to the Conference on Disarmament

Leonardo Bencini graduated in Political Science, specializing in international studies, from the University of Florence. He joined the Italian Foreign Service in 1993 and was assigned to the United Nations Office within the Directorate-General for Political Affairs of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he dealt with human rights issues.

From 1998 to 2001, he served as Consul at the Consulate General of Italy in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. From 2001 to 2005, he was Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Italy to Norway and Iceland in Oslo. He subsequently returned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, where from 2005 to 2010 he served as Deputy Head of the UN Division within the Directorate of Multilateral Political Affairs, responsible for issues such as the reform of the United Nations Security Council, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding.

From 2010 to 2014, he was posted to Moscow as First Counsellor and Head of the Trade and Economic Section of the Embassy of Italy to the Russian Federation and to Turkmenistan. He was then appointed Consul General of Italy in St. Petersburg, Russian Federation, serving from 2014 to 2018. In 2017, he was promoted to the rank of Minister Plenipotentiary.

From 2019 to 2022, he served as Head of Strategy, Global Processes, and International Organisations in the Directorate-General for Development Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome. In that capacity, he was in charge of global health issues and coordinated Italy’s contribution to the international response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the donation of vaccines to developing countries.

In May 2022, he was appointed Permanent Representative of Italy to the Conference on Disarmament (CD) in Geneva. He was the President of the Ninth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention, which took place in Geneva from November to December 2022. He also chaired the meetings of the CD during Italy’s rotating presidency of the body in January and February 2025.

He speaks fluent English, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian, and has a working knowledge of Spanish. He is an Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (OMRI).

He is married and has one daughter.