UN-Sekretary General Annan appoints Karen AbuZayd of United States as UNRWA Commissioner-General

After consulting the members of the Advisory Commission for the United
Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA), Secretary-General Kofi Annan has decided to appoint the Deputy
Commissioner-General of UNRWA, Karen AbuZayd, as d the new
Commissioner-General of the Agency. Ms. AbuZayd, a national of the
United States, succeeds Peter Hansen of Denmark.

Biographical Note Karen Abu Zayd – UNRWA Commissioner-General

In August 2000, Ms. Abu Zayd was appointed to the post of Deputy
Commissioner-General of UNRWA. On 1 April 2005, she became the
Acting Commissioner-General. From her base in Gaza, she helped to
oversee the education, health, social services and microenterprise
programmes for 4.1 million Palestinian refugees. Since September
2000, her work has concentrated on providing emergency assistance to,
and generating employment for, the victims of the current crisis in the
West Bank and Gaza.

Before joining UNRWA, Ms. AbuZayd worked for the Office of the United

Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for 19 years. She
began her humanitarian career in the Sudan in 1981, dealing with
Ugandan, Chadian and Ethiopian refugees fleeing from war and famine
in their own countries. From the Sudan, she moved to Namibia in 1989
to help coordinate the return of apartheid-era refugees, a successful
repatriation operation which led to elections and independence. A
year later, the Liberian civil war erupted, and she moved to Sierra
Leone to head the UNHCR office in Freetown, initiating a new
emergency response, that of settling 100,000 Liberians in 600
villages along the Liberian/Sierra Leone border.

From 1991 to 1993 in UNHCR