Secretary-General Appoints Rabab Fatima of Bangladesh Special Representative for Afghanistan, Head of United Nations Assistance Mission (UNAMA)

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres announced today the appointment of Rabab Fatima of Bangladesh as his new Special Representative for Afghanistan and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA).

Ms. Fatima succeeds Roza Otunbayeva of Kyrgyzstan, to whom the Secretary-General expressed his gratitude for her dedicated service. He also thanks Georgette Gagnon of Canada, Deputy Special Representative of UNAMA, who currently serves as Officer-in-Charge of the Mission.

Ms. Fatima brings to the position over 30 years of experience in national and international civil service, encompassing bilateral and multilateral diplomacy, policymaking, advocacy, programme planning and implementation. She currently serves as Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States.

Prior to this, she was the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations in New York, from 2019 to 2022. In that capacity, she served as the President of the Executive Boards of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) in 2020 and UN-Women in 2022, as well as Vice-President of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)/United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)/United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) Executive Board in 2021. She was the first woman to be elected as the Chair of the Peacebuilding Commission in 2022. She also served as a Vice-President of the seventy-seventh session of the United Nations General Assembly.

As a career diplomat, Ms. Fatima served as Ambassador of Bangladesh to Japan from 2016 to 2019, as Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Bangladesh from 2015 to 2016, and in Bangladesh missions in New York, Geneva, Beijing and Kolkata, and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in different capacities.

Ms. Fatima also served in the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as Regional Adviser for South and South-West Asia and Regional Adviser for Climate Change and Migration from 2012 to 2015, and as Regional Representative for South Asia from 2007 to 2011. She was the Head of Human Rights at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London from 2006 to 2007.

Ms. Fatima holds a master's degree in international relations and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, United States, and a bachelor's degree in social science from the University of Canberra, Australia. In addition to her native Bangla, she speaks English and has working knowledge of Hindi and Urdu.

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* This supersedes Press Release SG/A/2120 of 9 June 2022.