Rabab Fatima named UN special representative for Afghanistan

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Rabab Fatima from Bangladesh as his new Special Representative for Afghanistan. In this role, she will also serve as the Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). The UN Headquarters shared the official announcement on 15 July.

Rabab Fatima takes over the job from Roza Otunbayeva, the former President and Foreign Minister of Kyrgyzstan, whom the Secretary-General thanked for her hard work. António Guterres also thanked Georgette Gagnon from Canada, who was running the mission temporarily before the new appointment.

The UN chief highlighted that Rabab Fatima brings more than 30 years of experience in national and international jobs, including working on global policies and helping countries work together. Before getting this new role, she worked as a UN Under-Secretary-General helping developing nations and small island states.

As a well-known career diplomat, she was the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN in New York from 2019 to 2022. During that time, she served as the President of the Executive Boards for both UNICEF and UN-Women. She also made history in 2022 by becoming the first woman elected as the chair of the UN Peacebuilding Commission.

Earlier in her career, Rabab Fatima worked with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) as a regional adviser focusing on climate change and migration. She also led the human rights department at the Commonwealth Secretariat in London. For her home country, she served as the Bangladeshi ambassador to Japan from 2016 to 2019 and worked in government missions in Geneva, New York, Beijing, and Kolkata.

Rabab Fatima completed her master’s degree in international relations and diplomacy at Tufts University in the United States after earning a bachelor’s degree from the University of Canberra in Australia. She speaks Bangla, English, Hindi, and Urdu and takes over the UN Afghanistan mission at a very important time.