Belize welcomes new UN Resident Coordinator

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Mr. Raul Salazar of Peru as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Belize and El Salvador, with the host Governments's approval. He took up his post on 1 July.

Mr. Salazar brings more than 24 years of international experience in programme management poverty reduction, governance, disaster risk reduction and crisis prevention and recovery, including in complex post crisis situations.

 

Prior to his appointment as Resident Coordinator, he served as Chief of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) at the Regional Office for the Americas and the Caribbean in Panama. There, he led the regional team providing policy and technical advice to prevent the impact of disasters in 35 countries and small island development states highly exposed to social crisis and disaster risks. His responsibilities involved fostering high level political consultation processes leading to national strategies for resilience building in coherence with the 2030 agenda, the Sendai Framework and the Paris Agreement. He has experience in transboundary programmes and partnerships for resilience building with financing institutions, science and technology, civil society organisations, women and youth, people living with disabilities and building networks for the engagement of the private sector. 

Previously to UNDRR, Mr. Salazar also worked in UNDP Peru (1997-2010), where he was the Cluster Manager in the area of Poverty Reduction and Crisis Prevention and Recovery, providing policy and technical support in disaster risk reduction recovery processes, where he set up strategies, effective teams and project structures to deliver results. He was also Chair of the UN Emergency Technical Team from 2003 to 2010 and member of the UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) since 2003, participating in different UN Post Disaster Coordination missions such as in Jamaica (Hurricane Ivan 2004), coordination of the recovery process after the earthquake in Peru (2007) and Haiti (2010) and the social crisis in Kyrgyzstan (August 2010). 

Mr. Salazar is an Economist by the Catholic University of Lima – Peru (1989), an MBA by the Universidad of Piura-IESE, Peru-Spain (1992) and holds a MSc in National Development and Project Planning by the University of Bradford, UK (1995).