On 31 July 2007, the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of Noeleen Heyzer as Executive Secretary of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).
Ms Heyzer, Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), obtained her BA (Sociology major) and MA from NUS. She is the first woman to head ESCAP, the biggest of the UN's five regional commissions.
Said Ms Heyzer, "This is a great honour and an exciting opportunity," said Ms. Heyzer. "The Asia-Pacific region has tremendous development experiences and diversity and I will focus my efforts on bringing a more integrated approach to advancing its social, economic and environmental agenda."
It has been an enormous privilege to lead such a dynamic organization and to be an integral part of advancing women's human rights and gender equality.
Reflecting on her time as Executive Director of UNIFEM, a position she has held since 1994, she added: "It has been an enormous privilege to lead such a dynamic organization and to be an integral part of advancing women's human rights and gender equality. It is by now widely recognized that development efforts will fail without empowering women, and I will bring my experience and expertise on gender issues to my position at ESCAP."
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We congratulate Ms Heyzer and wish her the best in her new appointment!
Ms Fong Foong Mei, a FASS Literature graduate, who now works for the Wall Street Journal (China) is part of a team who won the Pulitzer Prize for their work on a series of articles on Chinese construction workers, focusing on their trials and tribulations. This was announced in April this year.
