Italian lawyer Visco takes over as IBA president
An Italian international-business lawyer has taken over as president of the International Bar Association (IBA) for 2026.
Claudio Visco is a senior partner at the leading Italian law firm Lipani Legal & Tax and served as IBA president-elect in 2025.
He has succeeded Jaime Carey, senior partner at Chilean law firm Carey, after both agreed to share the two-year term.
The IBA says that his presidency begins at a time of profound challenges to the international legal order, marked by increasing threats to the rule of law, judicial independence, and the legal profession worldwide.
Responsibility
“Knowing that I am part of a continuum working to uphold the rule of law, access to justice, and the independence of the legal profession fills me with pride, but also with a deep sense of responsibility,” Visco said.
“We are witnessing unprecedented violations of these fundamental principles in jurisdictions where such developments would once have been unthinkable,” he added.
The new president said that conflicts and tensions in some places – including those in Afghanistan, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela – had placed the IBA under “extraordinary pressure”, requiring precise responses firmly rooted in international law.
Visco said that he would work to increase awareness of the role of lawyers as “gatekeepers in defending the core values of our societies”.