Our Team in Maldives

Areti Sianni is the UNHCR Chief of Mission for India and Maldives. Areti has over 30 years of experience in refugee protection across Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia-Pacific, including emergency operations, where she has held key positions such as Assistant Representative (Protection) in UNHCR Yemen and Assistant Chief of Mission (Protection) in UNHCR Libya. From 2012-2014, she was seconded to the Bali Process Regional Support Office where she advised on protection sensitive responses to mixed movements of refugees and migrants including by sea. Before joining UNHCR in 2008, Areti worked as an independent consultant with foundations and international NGOs including the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, Amnesty International- International Secretariat and the Barrow Cadbury Trust.

With more than 20 years of experience in development and operations across several different regions and organizations, Mr. Callanan now serves as the Director of UNOPS Multi-Country Office, responsible for UNOPS operations in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Prior to this he served as Director of UNOPS New York office where he managed operations in 110 countries and represented UNOPS in the Executive Board. He has been responsible for planning and managing projects with up to 179,000 personnel, has worked for the private sector, United Nations and the military. With extensive experience in humanitarian, development and post-conflict settings, he has worked in Afghanistan, East Timor, Sudan, Iraq, China, UAE, State of Palestine, Denmark, USA, Nepal, Jordan, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. He has won UNOPS Executive Director’s award four times, graduated with Honors in Science from UNSW, and as a Sloan Fellow was granted an MBA from MIT Sloan Business School focused on Innovation and Global Leadership. For UNOPS he has been responsible for delivery or direct management of over $900m worth of projects across 5 continents.

Chiyo Kanda is the World Bank’s Country Manager for Maldives and Sri Lanka. She has held technical and managerial positions in the World Bank and other international development institutions for nearly 30 years. Prior to joining the South Asia Region, Chiyo worked as the Manager of the Results Unit of the Operations Policy and Country Services (OPCS), Operations Manager for the Philippines Country Management Unit and as deputy to the Country Director in Tanzania. She holds an MBA and a Master’s Degrees in Economics and in International Development.

Dr. Edward Addai as the new Representative to the UNICEF Maldives Country Office.

Dr. Edward Addai was originally a public health physician, specialized in policy analysis, planning, monitoring and evaluation. He is a systems thinker and an expert in programme design and results-based management. He started his career over 30 years ago as a clinician and district medical officer in Ahafo Ano South, a small district in Ghana, and worked his way to become the Director of Policy Planning Monitoring and Evaluation in Ghana. Eddie is joining UNICEF Maldives from Addis Ababa where is currently the UNCEF Representative to the African Union and UNECA.

Prior to taking on that role, he was the Regional Chief of Programme Planning Monitoring and Evaluation in UNICEF ESARO, and before that he was the Director of Monitoring and Evaluation in the Global Fund and Technical Officer Planning, Programming, and Evaluation in the World Health Organisation Africa Region.

Mr. Enrico Boninsegna started his assignment with UNODC in May 2020, supporting activities carried out in the field of preventing and countering terrorism and violent extremism in Sri Lanka and the Maldives. Prior to his current position, Mr. Boninsegna worked for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe as a Monitoring Officer in Donetsk (Non-Government-Controlled Areas of Ukraine), and as a Human Rights Officer on Countering Terrorism in Warsaw (Poland). Additional professional experiences include working as an Associate Expert for UNODC’s Regional Office for Central Asia (2010-2012) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and as a defence Case Manager at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (2009-2010) in The Hague, Netherlands. Mr. Boninsegna holds a master’s degree in law from the University of Bologna (Italy) and a LL.M. from the University of Turin (Italy).

Enrico Gaveglia is the UNDP Resident Representative in Maldives since October 2021. He is an experienced development professional with over 16 years of experience in the United Nations Development System. Between 2016 and 2021 he served as the Deputy Resident Representative of UNDP in the Philippines, and from 2010 to 2016, he was the Deputy Country Director for UNDP in Sri Lanka and Cambodia. Enrico also served as the Head of the Trust Fund Management Unit in UN and UNDP in Sudan, from 2005 to 2010. He is a regular outposted resource of UNDP Bureau of Management, Crisis Bureau, an innovation advocate for the UNDP Asia Pacific Regional Innovation Center and has lived the last 11 years in the Asia Pacific Region. Prior to UNDP, he also spent five years with the European Union in the former regional Delegation to India, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and the Maldives. He holds a Master degree in Economics from the University of Florence, Italy.

Chief of the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific of the United
Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).
Over 25 years of experience in international cooperation with the UN
and other international organizations at the headquarters and in the
field in the areas of sustainable development, disaster risk
management, humanitarian relief, and refugee, IDPs and human rights
protection.

Ms. Mikiko Tanaka is the Director and Head of ESCAP Subregional Office for South and South-West Asia Office, New Delhi effective 2 May 2022. Ms. Tanaka brings over twenty-five years of experience within the United Nations system. She most recently served as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Guyana and worked with UNDP in Guyana, Yemen, Timor-Leste, Pakistan, Benin, China, Lao PDR and New York. Prior to the UN, she worked for Care International in Thailand and the financial sector in Japan. Ms. Tanaka holds master’s degrees in public policy and management from the University of London and in rural development management from Khon Kaen University in Thailand, and a bachelor’s degree from the International Christian University in Japan.

Ms. Simpson has 26 years of experience working on issues relating to gender equality and inclusion in the world of work, with over 20 years working internationally. Previously she was ILO’s Senior Specialist on gender equality and non-discrimination, covering East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific. Prior to that, she headed ILO’s Global Women’s Entrepreneurship Development and Entrepreneurship Education programmes from Geneva. Joni was the OIC for the ILO Country Office in Kathmandu, Nepal in early 2023. She holds a Master's degree in Cultural anthropology and a Bachelor’s in Education. Before joining the ILO, she headed a Women’s Enterprise Center and social purpose enterprise in Canada. She has lived and worked in the Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe and North America.

Kristin Parco is presently the Chief of Mission for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) in Sri Lanka and the Maldives, United Nations (UN) Migration Agency and holds a master’s degree in development management. She has more than 24 years of experience in migration, health, humanitarian & development work in Haiti, Bangladesh, Nepal, Philippines, Myanmar, Indonesia and Cambodia. Ms. Parco is from the Philippines, and she started her career in Cambodia in 1998 working with various INGO’s and since 2000 has worked with IOM on migration programs focusing on labor and human development, counter trafficking, migration and development, migration governance, migration health and immigration and border management and emergency and post crisis. She was the Chief of Mission of IOM Cambodia prior to being posted to Sri Lanka. During this period, Ms. Parco served as the UN Resident Coordinator a.i in Cambodia on numerous occasions. She works with UN, NGOs, CSO’s, academia, private sectors and government to maximize the potential of migration to achieve sustainable development outcomes for migrants and societies leading to supporting a whole society and whole government approach in achieving Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2030.

Dr. Nazneen Anwar has more than 35 years of professional experience in the field of public health including mental health; health policy, planning and capacity development; non-communicable diseases; nutrition; vaccine preventable diseases; disability prevention; health research and development; and health advocacy. She joined the WHO Country Office Bangladesh in 2010 as a National Consultant and since then has served the WHO Regional Office for South East Asia first as Technical Officer, and subsequently Regional Advisor on Mental Health. She has a successful track record in strengthening the mental health and substance use policy, plan, programme and legislative framework across the Member States of WHO South-East Asia Region. She is credited with facilitating the development and implementation of various innovative approaches targeted at strengthening of mental health care systems and capacity across the region by leveraging on partnership development and resource mobilization. She is a qualified Medical Doctor and holds a Master’s degree in public health.

Ms. Shadiya Ibrahim is the Head of Office at UNFPA in Maldives since 2020. She leads the country team in the development and management of the UNFPA country programme of cooperation which supports efforts to achieve UNFPA’s transformative results contributing to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. She has been in UNFPA in various portfolios since January 1997 with over 20 years of experience. She has a Masters in Social Change and Development, a Post Graduate Diploma in Social Science Research and Bachelors (hons) in Computing and Mathematics.

Ms Sherina Tabassum is a Country Director in the Asia and the Pacific Division in IFAD and leads the management of the Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka portfolios since March 2021. She is a policy and rural development specialist and leads the work on partnership building with the Government, development partners and civil society, and the work on knowledge management and communication in the countries. Prior to joining IFAD in 2017, Ms Tabassum served as the Governance Advisor in the United States Agency for International Development for nine years. She also worked as a project director at the Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, a private sector development think tank. In addition to Bangladesh and Maldives, Ms Tabassum has worked in Timor-Leste and Thailand. Ms Tabassum received her education in Bangladesh and Thailand in international relations, management and climate change.

Tim Curtis is the Director and UNESCO Representative, UNESCO New Delhi Regional Office covering Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka. Prior to this appointment he served since January 2016 as the Secretary of UNESCO’s 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, overseeing both the statutory and operational dimensions of UNESCO’s global programme for Living Heritage. He has been working in the field of culture and sustainable development in diverse international contexts for over twenty-five years, of which twenty have been with UNESCO. He served as a UNESCO programme specialist for Culture in East Africa as well as in South East Asia from 2004 until 2016. Prior to his work with UNESCO he was involved in advocacy and academic work, and received a PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University, for which he did extensive ethnographic research among the Na’hai speakers of Malakula, Republic of Vanuatu.

Vimlendra Sharan is the FAO Representative for Sri Lanka and Maldives since June 2021. He previously served as the Director of the FAO Liaison Office for North America and brings with him three decades of national and international Government leadership experience focusing on rural development, agriculture, and food security issues. Prior to his role in Washington, he also served as Permanent Representative of India to the Rome based UN Agencies and filled positions of the Vice President of the World Food Programme (WFP) Executive Board, Chairman of the Evaluation Committee at International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Asia Group Representative on FAO Programme Committee, and a member of the FAO Council as well. Vimlendra has further worked with the Indian Government extensively in related areas. He holds a degree in Economics from St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, India and an MBA in Public Policy from University of Birmingham, UK.