COLOMBO (News 1st) – Hanaa Singer, the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in Sri Lanka, who is leaving upon completion of her service, met President Ranil Wickremesinghe on Monday (19).The President engaged in cordial conversation with Singer and thanked her for the services she had rendered to Sri Lanka and wished her the best of luck in her future endeavours.
Hanaa Singer herved as the Resident Coordinator of the United Nations in Sri Lanka since September 07, 2018. As the UN Resident Coordinator in Srilanka, Ms Hanaa Singer led a UN Country Team of 22 resident and non-resident UN Agencies.
She is the representative of the UN Secretary-General in Sri Lanka.Ms Singer has worked for close to 30 years across development and humanitarian contexts at various senior management and strategic leadership roles.Prior to this appointment, she has 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.