United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Raouf Mazou of the Republic of the Congo, as Assistant Secretary-General to serve as the Assistant High Commissioner for Operations, Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Mr. Mazou will succeed George Okoth-Obbo of Uganda who has been appointed as Secretary to the High-Level Panel on Internal Displacement. The Secretary-General and the High Commissioner for Refugees are grateful for Mr. Okoth-Obbo’s 36 years of dedicated service to the refugee cause, including five years as Assistant High Commissioner for Operations.
Mr. Mazou brings to the position some 28 years of professional experience with UNHCR, having served in a range of functions across the organization, including in a series of relevant senior leadership roles at Headquarters and in a range of field operations. These included overseeing UNHCR’s global emergency preparedness and response operations, and security management, and more recently, playing a pivotal role in UNHCR’s regionalization process as Director of the Regional Bureau for Africa, overseeing the transition of one Headquarters-based Africa Bureau at Headquarters, to three field-based Bureaux. Mr. Mazou served as UNHCR Representative in Kenya from 2013 to 2018.
Mr. Mazou holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He is fluent in English and French.
