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Australian national appointed as new UN disaster risk reduction chief

Xinhua, November 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Friday announced appointment of Robert Glasser, an Australian national, as assistant secretary-general and special representative of the Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, who will lead the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

Glasser will replace Margareta Wahlstrom of Sweden, who has been in this position for seven years.

Glasser is currently Executive-in-Residence at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, where he has focused on the humanitarian impacts of climate change. He once was chief executive of CARE Australia, overseeing aid and humanitarian relief programs in Cambodia, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea and the Middle East.

UNISDR was established in 1999 to facilitate the implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. It was mandated to serve as the focal point in the United Nations system for the coordination of disaster reduction and to ensure synergies among the disaster reduction activities of the UN system and regional organizations and activities in socio-economic and humanitarian fields. Enditem