Ben Mellor

Biography

Ben Mellor has been the Director of the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) India and Indian Ocean Directorate since 2021.  He leads on UK relations with this critically important region – including Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, and Sri Lanka; as well as on development programming across the wider Indo-Pacific region.

Ben has worked in foreign policy and development for nearly 30 years covering Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe; and in London and Washington.

At the start of his career, Ben worked on maximising the contribution of the private sector to development outcomes: working with major chemical companies on the Montreal Protocol on Ozone Depletion; and subsequently on urban development, water and sanitation and enterprise development in India. Ben represented the UK on the Board of the World Bank and led the Department for International Development (DFID) Business Alliances Team.

Ben went on to spend over a decade working in or on fragile and conflict affected states. He was Head of the DFID Offices in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Nigeria; and also held London-based roles covering countries across East and Central Africa and the Middle East and North Africa (including Iraq, Libya and Syria). 

In 2018 he returned to work on economic prosperity as Economic Development Director in DFID, before leading on the merger with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and creation of the new Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office in 2020.

Throughout his career Ben has had the opportunity to break new, innovative ground. This has included developing a new industry standard for transparency in the oil and gas sector (the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative), reviewing the DFID bilateral aid programme for the coalition government in 2010, leading the first Stabilisation Response Team in to Benghazi in 2011, or supporting the creation of the FCDO in 2020.