Biographical Note

SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS MICHEL SIDIBE ( MALI) EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR of UNAIDS

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Michel Sidibé of Mali as the next Executive Director of the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).  Mr. Sidibé will replace Peter Piot.

The appointment follows an open and wide-ranging search process.  Led by the Co-sponsoring Organizations and chaired by Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization (WHO), the process included interviews and consultations with Governments and other concerned parties through the UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board.

The Secretary-General is grateful for Dr. Piot’s remarkable leadership of UNAIDS since its creation 13 years ago.  Dr. Piot has been at the forefront of the global response to AIDS, and his successor inherits an organization that is well positioned to lead and coordinate the work of the United Nations in this field in the years to come.

Mr. Sidibé is currently Deputy Executive Director of UNAIDS and has worked in the United Nations for 20 years.  He brings a wealth of experience, together with a firm commitment to human rights and to greater involvement of people living with and affected by HIV.  Mr. Sidibé joined UNAIDS in 2001 as Director of Country and Regional Support, overseeing a reform effort that is recognized as having transformed UNAIDS into a more focused, efficient and effective joint programme for delivering country-level results.

He began his career in global health almost 30 years ago, focusing on the health and welfare of the nomadic Tuareg people in the Timbuktu region of his native Mali and working for the international development federation Terre des Hommes.  In 1987, recruited by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), he moved to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.  He later served at UNICEF headquarters in New York, and as UNICEF Country Representative in Swaziland, Burundi and Uganda.

Over his career, Mr. Sidibé has personally engaged key world leaders in working towards sustainable and strategic responses to AIDS.  He also continues actively to support the meaningful involvement of people living with and affected by HIV in all parts of the world, and in all aspects of the responses.

In recognition of his achievements in the field of AIDS, he was recently awarded an honorary professorship at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.

Mr. Sidibé holds advanced academic degrees in economics, international development and social planning.  He is fluent in English and French, and speaks a number of African languages.  Born in 1952, Mr. Sidibé is married and has four children.

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