United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has announced the appointment of Sri Lanka’s Indrika Ratwatte as his new Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan with the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and Resident Coordinator in Afghanistan.
According to a United Nations (UN) statement, Indrika Ratwatte will also serve as the Humanitarian Coordinator.
“Ratwatte succeeds Ramiz Alakbarov of Azerbaijan, to whom the Secretary-General is grateful for his dedicated service. The Secretary-General also recognizes the service of Daniel Endres as ad-interim Deputy Special Representative, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator,” the statement further said.
Indrika Ratwatte began his career with the United Nations in 1992 as a Refugee Affairs Officer with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. He joined UNHCR in 1993 during the war in the former Yugoslavia when he was deployed in Bosnia and Herzegovina and later in Croatia.
Over his career with UNHCR Ratwatte has served in Hong Kong, Thailand, Pakistan, West Timor, Macedonia, Tanzania and at UNHCR HQ in Geneva. Notably, during his tenure as UNHCR’s Assistant Representative in Pakistan, Ratwatte oversaw the first-ever biometric registration of Afghan refugees, enabling then large-scale voluntary repatriation. As the Deputy Representative in Tanzania, Ratwatte conceptualized and co-negotiated the Tanzania Comprehensive Solutions Strategy which resulted in the award of naturalization to 165,000 Burundian refugees in the country.
Most recently, Ratwatte has served as Deputy Director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific in Geneva, UNHCR’s Representative in Pakistan and since 2017, as the Director of UNHCR’s Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific.
Ratwatte holds a BA with Honours in English and Sociology from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University, New York and has qualified as an attorney at law. (NewsWire)