A veteran UN relief official was Tuesday named head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the body that has been the main source of support for Palestinian refugees for the past 55 years.
Karen AbuZayd, a United States national who was already UNRWAs Deputy Commissioner-General for the past five years and Acting Commissioner-General since Peter Hansen of Denmark relinquished the post in March, worked for 19 years for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) before joining the agency.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan voiced his delight that Ms. AbuZayd has agreed to serve a full three-year term as Commissioner-General.
– The Secretary-General believes that under her leadership UNRWA will carry out its mandate and fully live up to its responsibilities, during a period which, we all hope, will see decisive progress towards lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians, based on United Nations resolutions and a negotiated settlement of all outstanding issues, including the refugee problem,” Mr. Kofi Annans statement added.
From her base in Gaza Ms. AbuZayd has helped oversee the education, health, social services and micro-enterprise programmes for 4,1 million Palestinian refugees.
During her time at UNHCR she first worked in Sudan in 1981, dealing with Ugandan, Chadian and Ethiopian refugees fleeing from war and famine in their own countries.
In 1989 she moved to Namibia to help coordinate the return of apartheid-era refugees. A year later the Liberian civil war erupted and she moved to neighbouring Sierra Leone, and helped settle 100,000 Liberians in 600 villages along the joint border.
From 1991-93 she directed the South African repatriation and Kenya-Somali border operations from UNHCR headquarters in Geneva before serving as chief of mission in Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where 4 million people displaced or otherwise affected by the war there were kept alive by the agency’s airlift and convoy activities.
In her final four years at UNHCR she was chef de cabinet to High Commissioner Sadako Ogata.
Before joining the UNHCR, Ms. AbuZayd lectured in political science and Islamic studies at Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, and at Juba University in southern Sudan. She earned her B.Sc. at DePauwUniversity in Indiana and her M.A. in Islamic Studies at McGillUniversity in Canada.
She is married to a Sudanese professor and has two children.
UNRWA (the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East) is a relief and human development agency, providing education, healthcare, social services and emergency aid to over four million refugees living in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria.
UNRWA is by far the largest UN operation in the Middle East, with over 25.000 staff, almost all of them refugees themselves, working directly to benefit their communities – as teachers, doctors, nurses or social workers.
Kilde: FNs nyhedstjeneste
Læs mere om UNRWA på www.un.org/unrwa
