UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed senior UN official Siddharth Chatterjee of India as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in China. Resident Coordinators are the UN Secretary-General’s representatives for development at the country level. They lead UN teams supporting countries to recover better from the COVID-19 pandemic through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Guterres appointed Chatterjee as the Resident Coordinator in China, with the host government’s approval. Mr. Chatterjee will arrive in Beijing before the end of January 2021 and will assume the function shortly after his presenting of credentials to the government.
Chatterjee has been with the UN for over 20 years. He has worked at the UN missions in Iraq, and at the UNICEF offices in Somalia, Darfur (Sudan), South Sudan and Indonesia. In South Sudan, he led the demobilisation of over 3,500 child soldiers. Chatterjee’s appointment comes at a time of tension between India and China at the LAC. “It is a massive vote of trust by the People’s Republic of China on multilateralism, where they see me as an international civil servant rather than identified by a particular nationality. Perhaps India and China can lead the renaissance of multilateralism,” Chatterjee told.
Mr. Chatterjee has more than 25 years of experience in international cooperation, sustainable development, humanitarian coordination and peace and security, which he has acquired at the United Nations and externally. Most recently, he served as United Nations Resident Coordinator in Kenya after holding other leadership positions across the Organization, including Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Kenya, Regional Director for the Middle East and Europe for the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in Denmark and Chief of Staff in the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI). He also held leadership positions with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Indonesia, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan and in United Nations peacekeeping operations with the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH).
Mr. Chatterjee also served in the Red Cross Movement (IFRC) as the Chief Diplomat and Head of Resource Mobilization in Switzerland and before joining the United Nations in 1997, he was a commissioned officer in the Indian Army. A TEDx speaker, he is a regular opinion contributor on humanitarian and development issues for a range of local, regional and international media outlets and journals. Mr. Chatterjee holds a master’s degree in public policy from Princeton University in the United States of America and a bachelor’s degree from the National Defence Academy in India.
