Major leadership changes were afoot at the United Nations in July, with the biggest relating to UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore, who announced she had made the “difficult decision” to leave her post after more than three years in office.
Fore, who said that she needed to devote her energy to her husband’s health issues, will stay on at UNICEF until U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres appoints her successor. There are a number of questions around who will fill her post, with observers now considering the challenges that the next UNICEF chief might face, as Devex reported recently.
In other U.N. leadership news, Martin Griffiths began his term as the new undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator in mid-July. “I will listen to, and speak up for, people whose lives are on the very edge,” Griffiths wrote on Twitter.