The UN Resident Coordinator Office
The UN Resident Coordinator’s Office (UN RCO) in Nepal works under the strategic guidance of the UN Resident Coordinator (RC) and supports the UN Country Team (UNCT) in the advancement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The UN RCO fulfills the following five key functions in support of the responsibilities of the RC and the UNCT including:
- Strategic planning;
- Development economics;
- Partnerships and development finance;
- Data and results management and reporting; and
- Research, communications and advocacy.
The UN RCO and UNCT work closely with the Government of Nepal and other Development Partners to support Nepal in achieving Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The UN RCO team supports the RC and UNCT in ensuring a more coordinated and coherent approach across the work of the UN and is composed of experts in development and humanitarian coordination, information management, human rights, gender equality, communications and communications.
United Nations Resident Coordinator
Ms. Hanaa Singer-Hamdy is the UN Resident Coordinator in Nepal. She has worked for close to 30 years across development and humanitarian contexts at various senior management and strategic leadership roles. She served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Sri Lanka from 2018 to 2022. Under her leadership, the UN in Sri Lanka continued its partnership with the Government in responding to complex economic and political challenges including the 2019 Easter Bombings, COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent deterioration in macroeconomic stability and debt sustainability. When Sri Lanka faced a significant rise in food insecurity and other humanitarian concerns, she led a response targeting 3.4 million people in need that raised over $100 million for vital aid. To advance inclusive and rights-based development, she led the design of the United Nations Strategic Development Cooperation Framework 2023-2027 in consultation with Government and other stakeholders. Since 2019, she also mobilized over $36 million for peacebuilding and resilience programming through the UN Sri Lanka SDG Multi-Partner Trust Fund.
Prior to this, she held several senior management positions in UNICEF offices across the world, including as the Associate Regional Director in Geneva and as Country Representative for Syria, Nepal, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan.
In Syria, she provided strategic leadership to one of the largest protection crises on the global stage – successfully scaling up programmes through an integrated package of high impact interventions in health, nutrition, water and sanitation, education and child protection - increasing the reach of UNICEF’s work to the most vulnerable children including in besieged and hard-to-reach areas.
As UNICEF Chief in Nepal, she pioneered strategic programmes for scaling up sanitation, adolescents and multisectoral nutrition programmes, establishing strategic new alliances resulting in the government adopting national action plans. She has also led humanitarian programmes in Burundi and Haiti, and as a regional emergency advisor for CEE/CIS countries coordinated setting up cross border humanitarian operations to Afghanistan ,from central Asia, and Iraq,from south Turkey. She also provided technical support to emergency preparedness programmes in the North Caucasus, CEE/CIS countries .
Ms. Singer-Hamdy holds a Master's degree in Political Sociology and a Bachelor's degree in Political Science from the American University in Cairo, Egypt. She obtained a diploma in “Planning and Management of Decentralized Development Projects” from Bradford University in the United Kingdom. Ms. Singer-Hamdy has engaged in academia and research in political sociology and international relations at the American University of Cairo and at the Sadat’s Academy for Management Sciences, Faculty of Political Science of Cairo University.
