Jacques Moreillon served as Director General of the International Committee of the Red Cross

International Committee of the Red Cross

The International Committee of the Red Cross is a private humanitarian institution based in Geneva, Switzerland. States parties to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocols of 1977 and 2005, have given the ICRC a mandate to protect the victims of international and...

 (ICRC) until 1988 and as Secretary General of the World Organization of the Scout Movement

World Organization of the Scout Movement

The World Organization of the Scout Movement is the Non-governmental international organization which governs most national Scout Organizations, with 31 million members. WOSM was established in 1920, and has its headquarters at Geneva, Switzerland...

 (WOSM) from November 1, 1988 to March 31, 2004.

Moreillon was born in Vevey

Vevey

Vevey is a town in Switzerland in the canton Vaud, on the north shore of Lake Geneva, near Lausanne.It was the seat of the district of the same name until 2006, and is now part of the Riviera-Pays-d'Enhaut District...

, Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

. He studied at the University of Lausanne

University of Lausanne

The University of Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of theology, before being made a university in 1890. Today about 12,000 students and 2200 researchers study and work at the university...

 and obtained a doctorate in political science from the Graduate Institute of International Studies

Graduate Institute of International Studies

The Graduate Institute of International Studies, best known as HEI , was founded in 1927 as one of the first institutions in the world dedicated to the study of international relations...

 in Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

. He became an ICRC delegate in 1965, and rose to the rank of Director General by 1988.

In 1988 he became Secretary General of the World Organization of the Scout Movement (WOSM), a role he held until 2004. During this time the WOSM membership grew from 16 million members in 120 countries to 28 million members in 155 countries.