Secretary-General Appoints Raul Salazar of Peru United Nations Resident Coordinator in Belize, El Salvador
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appointed Raul Salazar of Peru as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Belize and El Salvador, with the host Government’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, he served as Chief of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction 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 for Sustainable Development, the Sendai Framework and the Paris Agreement on climate change.
He has experience in transboundary programmes and partnerships for resilience building with financing institutions, science and technology, civil society organizations, women and youth, people living with disabilities and building networks for the engagement of the private sector.
Mr. Salazar also worked in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Peru from 1997 to 2010, where he was the Cluster Manager in the area of poverty reduction and crisis prevention and recovery. He provided policy and technical support in disaster risk reduction recovery processes and set up strategies, effective teams and project structures to deliver results. He was also Chair of the United Nations Emergency Technical Team from 2003 to 2010 and a member of the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination since 2003, participating in different United Nations post disaster coordination missions, including in Jamaica (Hurricane Ivan, 2004), coordination of the recovery process after the earthquake in Peru (2007), Haiti (2010) and the social crisis in Kyrgyzstan (August 2010).
Mr. Salazar received his degree as an economist from the Catholic University of Lima — Peru (1989), a Master of Business Administration from the Universidad of Piura-IESE, Peru-Spain (1992) and a Master of Science in national development and project planning by the University of Bradford, United Kingdom (1995).