Nigeria’s Amina Mohammed named UN Deputy Secretary-General

Incoming United Nations (UN) Chief Antonio Guterres on 15 December 2016 appointed Nigeria's Environment Minister Amina Mohammed as his Deputy Secretary-General.

Guterres was recently sworn in as the ninth male UN Chief. He pledged to reach gender parity among senior leadership within his five-year term. He will take over from current Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 1 January 2017.

Also, Guterres appointed Brazilian diplomat Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti as Chef de Cabinet and South Korea’s Kyung-wha Kang as Special Adviser on Policy.

About Amina Mohammed

• On 11 November 2015, Amina Mohammed was appointed as the Minister of Environment of Nigeria.

• Previously, she served as Founder and CEO of the Center for Development Policy Solutions.

• She also served as an Adjunct Professor for the Master’s in Development Practice program at Columbia University.

• Born in 1961, she was the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Special Adviser on Post-2015 Development Planning. She was appointed to the position on 7 June 2012.

About Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations

• The Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations is the deputy to the Secretary-General of the United Nations.

• The office was created to handle many of the administrative responsibilities of the Secretary-General.

• The person appointed to the post also helps manage Secretariat operations and ensure coherence of activities and programmes.

• The post was formally established by the General Assembly at the end of 1997.

• Sweden’s Jan Eliasson was named as Deputy Secretary-General by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 2 March 2012.