United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Raouf Mazou of the Republic of the Congo, as Assistant Secretary-General to serve as the Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).Ìý Mr. Mazou will succeed George Okoth-Obbo of Uganda who has been appointed as Secretary to the High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement.Ìý The Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Refugees are grateful for Mr. Okoth-Obbo’s 36 years of dedicated service to the refugee cause, including five years as Assistant High Commissioner for Operations.
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Mr. Mazou brings to the position some 28 years of professional experience with UNHCR, having served in a range of functions across the organization, including in a series of relevant senior leadership roles at Headquarters and in a range of field operations. These included overseeing UNHCR’s global emergency preparedness and response operations, and security management, and more recently, playing a pivotal role in UNHCR’s regionalization process as Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa, overseeing the transition of one Headquarters-based Africa Bureau at Headquarters, to three field-based Bureaux. Mr. Mazou served as UNHCR Representative in Kenya from 2013 to 2018.
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Mr. Mazou holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Ìý He is fluent in English and French.
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