Guterres appoints Tom Fletcher as head of Ocha aid agency

(ANSA) – NEW YORK, 09 OCTOBER – UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has appointed the British Tom Fletcher as undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency aid coordination (OCHA). Fletcher takes over from Martin Griffiths who left the role in June for health reasons. Pending his inauguration, Ocha’s helm will be headed by the agency’s number two, Joyce Msuya. A former aide to former Labor prime minister Gordon Brown, Fletcher is currently rector of Hertford College, Oxford. He worked with the United Nations during his diplomatic career on behalf of the Foreign Office in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. He was British ambassador to Lebanon between 2011 and 2015 and foreign policy adviser to three prime ministers between 2007 and 2011. Fletcher takes over the leadership of OCHA at a time when the UN’s humanitarian arm is under intense pressure from crises in Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere in the world. “The humanitarian community is underfunded, overstretched and under attack. We must restore the relationship between the world and those in the most desperate need,” Fletcher said on that we are there to serve”. (ANSA).