United Nations: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Shalini Bahuguna, who has worked on artificial intelligence (AI), as the resident coordinator in Papua New Guinea.
Guterres’ Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Wednesday (local time) that she brings decades of experience with international organisations.
Resident coordinators are the highest-ranking UN officials in a country, leading the organisation’s teams working on UN programmes.
Most recently, she worked with UNICEF, developing an AI strategy in partnership with Accenture, according to the UN.
Earlier, she was the UNICEF representative in Tanzania, where she advanced children’s rights and the nation’s development priorities.
She has been the UNICEF deputy representative in Ethiopia and Myanmar, and chief of social policy and gender in Nigeria.
Bahuguna launched her career in development in India, working for an NGO on water and sanitation issues, and later worked with the Indian government and World Bank programme on water sector reform.
Her work with Britain’s Department for International Development (DFID) also took her to China, Indonesia and Afghanistan.
A graduate of Lady Shri Ram College in Delhi, she has a master’s degree in development economics and international development from Britain’s Swansea University.
The UN is involved with 192 programmes in Papua New Guinea with an outlay of $85.5 million.
It is a small Pacific nation that shares a border with Indonesia and has a population of about 13 million.
(IANS)
