Our Team in Syrian Arab Republic

Amanya Michael Ebye has spent 31 years working in the humanitarian assistance field. His humanitarian career started in 1993 in Uganda where he served as a Field Program Manager for a UNHCR funded program for Rwandese refugees in Western Uganda. From 1994 to 1997 he worked in Rwanda supporting communities that had survived the genocide.
In 1997 he joined ActionAid and served as the Humanitarian and Peace Building Coordinator for Uganda.
In 2001 he was appointed as the IRC Field Coordinator to oversee a multi sectoral program for Burundian and Congolese refugees in Western Tanzania.
From 2003 to 2005 he served as IRC Country Director for Tanzania and from 2005 to 2007 he served as the Director of the IRC’s Darfur multi sectoral programs in Sudan – one of the IRC’s largest and most challenging relief operations at the time– providing multi sectoral assistance to over one million IDPs in Darfur.
From 2007 to 2010, he served as the IRC Regional Director for the Middle East supporting programs in Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and the OPT.
From 2012 to 2016 he served as IRC Regional Director for DRC overseeing a program that provided assistance to 2.5 million displaced and vulnerable Congolese through its multi sectoral program.
In March 2017 he joined UNRWA as Deputy Director for Programs in Syria. UNRWA is mandated by the UN General Assembly to provide quasi-state social and relief services for about 450,000 Palestine refugees in Syria. UNRWA employs 4,000 staff in Syria with human development program across the country.
In February 2019, he was appointed as Field Director for the UNRWA Program in Syria.
A native of Uganda, Amanya received his B.A. in Social Work and Social Administration and an M.A. in Social Sector Planning and Management from Makerere University in Uganda.

Sudipto Mukerjee is an Architect and Town Planner with more than two decades of experience in international development. He is a joint recipient of the International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISoCaRP, Netherlands) and IKEA Foundation sponsored International Urban Ecology Award.

Sudipto has previously worked with the Government of India (1992-1997), UK Department for International Development (1998 - March 2005 as Infrastructure and Urban Advisor) and UN - Habitat (2005-2009, Head of Country Office).

He joined UNDP in September 2009 in the Iraq Country Office and has since worked as Country Director at Sierra Leone (August 2013 - October 2016) and Resident Representative in UNDP Bangladesh (October 2016 – August 2022). He has now been re-assigned to the Syrian Arab Republic as the UNDP Resident Representative.

Sudipto possesses significant experience in UN Country Programming and UNCT Coordination and is in the UN Resident Coordinator’s Pool.

Ms Bethke was appointed WHO Representative a.i. to the Syrian Arab Republic on 19 October 2024. She joined the WHO Syria Office in 2022, first serving as Emergency Team Lead and, in July 2024, moving to the position of WHO Deputy Representative.
Ms Bethke has extensive experience in public health, humanitarian health response, health cluster coordination, and resource mobilization. She served as Health Cluster Coordinator in Lebanon for 2 years following the Beirut Port Explosion in 2020, as Whole of Syria Health Cluster Coordinator for 3 years, starting in 2019, and led the WHO emergency response to the earthquake in Syria in February 2023.
Ms Bethke has worked with UN and international organizations in Liberia, Lebanon and Jordan. She holds 2 master’s degrees – in public health and in clinical social work – from Boston University, and a bachelor’s degree in psychology and Spanish from Vanderbilt University.

Marianne Ward is Country Director for the World Food Programme (WFP) in Syria, a position she assumed in January 2025. In this role, she provides supervision, strategic guidance, and support for WFP operations in Syria.
Ms. Ward brings more than 32 years of senior leadership and field experience in programme management, having worked for the World Food Programme in Africa, the Middle East, and headquarters.
Prior to this appointment, Ms. Ward served as Deputy Country Director in Ukraine, where she was responsible for leading the design and implementation of WFP operations. Prior to this role, Ms. Ward was Deputy Country Director for Operations in Sudan (2020-2022), and Iraq (2018-2020).
Ms. Ward began her career with WFP in 1993. Since then, she served in key senior positions in emergency operations, humanitarian policy, and government donor relations. These include her role as Senior Regional Programme Officer for the East and Central Africa region, based in Kenya, and Executive Manager to the WFP Assistant Executive Director for the Operations Services Department, based in Rome.
Ms. Ward also led the process to reform the organization’s policies for locally recruited employees, and served as President of the WFP Professional Staff Association.
Ms. Ward holds a degree in political science and a Master’s Degree in Management.
An Italian and American national, Ms. Ward resides in Italy with her family.

Muriel Mafico brings 32 years experience in development work from diverse programming contexts in Southern Africa and the Eastern Caribbean. She has extensive UN experience having joined UNICEF Zimbabwe in 2001 as Communication and Advocacy Specialist and subsequently as Head of Strategic Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation.
From 2008, Muriel held several UNICEF Deputy Representative posts in Eswatini (2008-2014), the Multi-Country Programme in the Eastern Caribbean covering 12 countries and UK Overseas Territories (2014-2019) and South Africa (2019-2023).
Ms Mafico holds a Master of Development Management and a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Mr. Yasumasa Kimura is Representative of UNICEF for the Syrian Arab Republic (May 2023), where he provides strategic and operational leadership of the UNICEF Country Office and programme in one of the world’s most complex and protracted crises and advocates for the rights of children in Syria guided by the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Prior to joining the Syria Country Office, he served as Deputy Representative (Programmes) of the UNICEF India Country Office (2021-2023), one of UNICEF’s largest programmes in the world, serving over 460 million children through 14 field offices covering 25 states and two union territories, where he was responsible for overall programme planning, implementation, and oversight.
Mr. Kimura also served as Representative ad interim of the UNICEF India office between November 2021 to October 2022.
During his tenure, Mr. Kimura oversaw UNICEF’s large scale COVID-19 response efforts in support of the Government of India during the peak of the public health emergency in 2020-2021. He was also responsible for the development of the new country programme 2023- 2027, accelerating and strengthening UNICEF’s technical and policy support to India at the national and state levels.
Mr. Kimura has over 25 years of experience with UNICEF. He has previously served as the Director of the UNICEF Public Partnerships Division in Tokyo (2016-2020) and as the UNICEF Regional Chief of Private Fundraising and Partnerships (2012-2015) in the East Asia and Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok, where he led the private sector partnerships for country offices in the region. He also led the promotion of Child Rights and Business
Principles with the private sector in the region. Prior to this, he was the Regional Fundraising Specialist of the Private Fundraising and Partnerships Division also in the UNICEF East Asia and Pacific Regional Office.
Prior to his posts in Bangkok, Mr. Kimura was with UNICEF HQ in New York working as Brand Development Officer for the Private Sector Division where he supported National Committees in Asia in developing programmes, strategies, and partnerships, such as leading the establishment of the pledge programme in Japan, ROK, and Hong Kong and contributing to its substantial growth. He started his career in UNICEF in 1997, holding several posts in New York.
Mr. Kimura holds a Master of Arts in International Development and Social Change from Clark University (U.S.A).

Gonzalo Vargas Llosa brings more than 33 years of experience with the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Prior to his appointment as the UNHCR Representative to Syria, Mr. Vargas Llosa, an international civil servant from Peru, served in different capacities at the UNHCR, at headquarters and in the field. Notable operations in the early years include postings as Representative in Panama and the Dominican Republic.

Assigned to New York from 2006-2010, Mr. Vargas Llosa served as Senior Policy Advisor for the UNHCR Liaison Office. He was also deployed as Head of Emergency Team to two situations - Pakistan for Kashmir earthquake of 2005 and during the Libya crisis in 2011. Further deployment includes Head of Camp Coordination and Management to Sudan.
From 2014 to 2018, Mr. Vargas Llosa served as Representative of UNHCR in London, United Kingdom, followed by an assignment as the UNHCR Representative in Brussels, Belgium for EU Affairs from 2018 to 2024, when the High Commissioner appointed him as UNHCR Representative to Syria.

Appointed in September 2024, as Head of OCHA in Syria, Mr. Joseph Inganji brings to the position over two decades of professional experience and an extensive knowledge in both humanitarian affairs and development programmes with a focus on contexts of complex emergencies and developments contexts.
Mr. Inganji has spent most of his career working for OCHA, DPO and reputable NGOs across the globe covering a range of situations in many different countries and continents as Chad, Central African Republic (CAR), Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, South Sudan, Rwanda, Uganda, Somalia, Burundi, Liberia, Sierra Leone etc.
Before assuming his current position as Head of OCHA Syria, Mr. Inganji was the Head of OCHA in South Sudan, Head of OCHA in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Head of OCHA in CAR, Deputy Head of OCHA in Afghanistan, Deputy Head of OCHA in DRC and Country Director of various reputable international humanitarian organizations including Norwegian Church Aid, CARE International, International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, ICRC, MERLIN, Save the Children Fund and the International Rescue Committee.
He holds a Master of Arts Degree in International Relations from the University of Nairobi, Kenya.
Mr. Inganji was born in 1968 and is a Kenyan national.

Toni Ettel, National of Lebanon, born in 1960 and graduated from university Saint Joseph (Lebanon) in 1986 with B. Sc in Agronomy. Attended a course in IAM Montpellier in rural development, at the end of which he joined WFP Lebanon office for 2 years as Program assistant, then joined FAO in 1989 as Associate professional Officer in Yemen, the start of his career with FAO for 11 years in development projects first as community forestry officer (Yemen, Syria, Jordan and Turkey) and then 22 years in Emergency projects (Sudan in two missions covering north-south crise and thereafter Darfur crise, Somalia and Egypt). He worked as desk operation officer at FAO Hqs covering Angola, Burundi and DRC. At the onset of the Avian Influenza and more specifically on May 2007, he was tasked to establish the Emergency Center for Transboundary Animal Disease (ECTAD) unit in Egypt, at the same time providing support to the ECTAD regional hub based in Beirut. During this period from 2007 till present, he occupied various positions in addition to ECTAD program operation officer, among others acting as Senior Field Program Operations officer for the MENA region for 2 years, then assigned as Funding Liaison officer for the FAO technical cooperation program and lastly Supporting Libya program that is managed from Cairo office. He has been appointed as acting FAO Representative for Syria as from October 2023.

Mr. Takabayashi has been assigned the Head of UN-Habitat Country Programme since 14 January 2024. He acted the Head of Syria Programme ad interim since 21 September 2022.
During the period May 2021-September 2022, Mr. Takabayashi served as a Programme Management Officer, Human Settlements in UN-Habitat Syria.
Before joining UN-Habitat Syria, Mr. Takabayashi was Programme Management Officer, Human Settlements in UN-Habitat Myanmar (2019-2021) and UN-Habitat Afghanistan (2015-2019) working on urban development and resilience programmes with focus on sustainable urban development, community driven development, climate change and disaster risk management.
Before joining UN-Habitat, from 2001 to 2015, Mr. Takabayashi worked for Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), served as Advisor for Capital Market, Deputy Director for Planning in Asia and the Pacific and ASEAN partnership, Deputy Director for Indonesia and several other positions managing technical cooperation and loan programmes and policy dialogue.
Mr. Takabayashi holds a Master’s Degree in Environment, Development and Policy from University of Sussex in UK, and a Master’s Degree in International Development Study from National Graduate Policy Institute in Japan.

Saleh TEMBO a Ugandan national, has been the Chief Security Advisor for the United Nations Department of Safety and Security in Syria since 7 April 2024.
Mr. Tembo started his career with the Uganda Police Force 1992 - 2001.
He joined UNHCR in 2001 as a Field Safety Adviser, 2001 - 04 in Sierra Leone and in Tanzania 2004 - 05.
His professional work experience with UNDSS spans 20 years in different countries and positions: Afghanistan, Herat, as a Field Security Coordination Officer 2006 - 08 and Kabul as an Operations Officer 2008 –
09; UN Security Advisor Malawi 2009 -11; Deputy Security Adviser Darfur, Sudan 2011-15; Dadaab, Kenya, as a Field Security Coordination Officer 2015 – 20; Security Advisor Philippine and Micronesia from 2020 – 24;
Currently as a Chief Security Adviser Syria April 2024 - present.
Mr. Tembo has MA in Risk, Crisis, and Disaster Management from the University of Leicester in UK, in addition to a BSC in Arts Degree from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
Born in 1965, Mr. Tembo is married and has 4 children. He likes hiking and travelling to the countryside.

United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Mr. Geir O. Pedersen appointed Mr. Tareq Talahma of Palestine as Head of Damascus Office for the United Nations Special Envoy for Syria. He started his work on 1 March 2024.

Mr. Talahma has a wealth of experience and expertise in political, humanitarian and development affairs with more than 20 years of service with the United Nations, including as OCHA Deputy Director for the Middle East and North Africa region, and acting Director for Operation and Advocacy based in New York.

Throughout his career, Mr. Talahma has demonstrated his commitment to serving in complex and fragile operations in countries such as Afghanistan, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Pakistan, Palestine, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. He has extensive experience in crisis management, negotiations and mediation, programming and planning in turbulent contexts, as well as the humanitarian-development nexus.

Mr. Talahma holds a degree in Environmental Studies from York University in Canada.

He is fluent in Arabic and English.

Mr. Watanabe has served as Country Coordinator since February 2023, representing the International Labour Organization (ILO) in Syria. Before his current assignment, Mr. Watanabe served at the ILO Headquarters, Sudan Programme Office, and the International Training Centre (ITC) of the ILO, all in the capacity of crisis response programming and capacity building support through the world of work, guided by its Recommendation No. 205 on Employment and Decent Work for Peace and Resilience.
Before joining the ILO, Mr. Watanabe worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, most recently as an advisor/researcher at the Permanent Delegation of Japan to the OECD in the field of official development assistance (ODA) policies and statistics.
Mr. Watanabe holds a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.

Mr. Sami Dimassi joined UNEP Regional Office for West Asia as Director and Regional Representative in 2018. He held several senior positions in the UN System, such as Senior ICT Advisor, Head of the Innovation Branch, Deputy Director of the Science division, Director of Private Sector Engagement, and Acting Director of Corporate Services all within UNEP. A Lebanese-Canadian national, he holds a bachelor’s degree in Information Technology from Ottawa University and a master’s in Management from Waterloo University in Canada.

Ms Costanza Farina is the Director of the UNESCO Regional Bureau in Beirut and Representative of UNESCO to Lebanon and Syria as of March 18, 2021. Before this, Farina was the UNESCO Representative in Jordan and performed as UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Jordan and Libya. She has over 30 years of experience with the UN, occupying different senior positions in Qatar, Geneva and Palestine. Farina holds a master’s degree in Oriental Languages and Cultures from the Istituto Universitario Orientale in Italy.

Ms Cristina Albertin is the UNODC Regional Representative for the Middle East and North Africa. Working for UNODC since 1994, Ms Albertin has served in different capacities in Peru and at UNODC Headquarters in Vienna (Regional Section Latin America and the Caribbean) before becoming a Representative in Bolivia, South Asia, and Nigeria. Before joining UNODC, she worked for three years with the World Food Programme in Bolivia.

Cynthia Darrous Khoury, a Lebanese national, is currently UNIC Beirut’s Officer-in-Charge. She has 20 years of experience in public information and crisis communications, 16 of which with the UN Information Centre in Beirut, where she has led on multiple campaigns while also developing and implementing strategies for communicating key UN messages in Lebanon and the region. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and communications from the Lebanese University.

Emmanuel Kalenzi is the UNIDO Representative and Head of Regional Office for Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. He has over 20 years of experience in development work, both in the public and private sectors as well as in international cooperation, and over 15 years with UNIDO. Mr. Kalenzi holds a Master of Business Administration from Wageningen University, a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture from Makerere University and is currently working on his PhD research.

Mounir Tabet who is a national of Canada took up his official functions as deputy executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) in September 2018. Mr Tabet was the UNDP country director for Iraq from 2016 to 2018 and oversaw the program on stabilization and transition. Prior to joining UNDP, Mr Tabet worked with the North-South Institute and the International Development Research Centre in Ottawa, and the University of Ottawa.
Mr Tabet is an Edward S. Mason Fellow, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University where he obtained a Master's degree in public administration. He also holds a Master's degree in economics from the University of Ottawa.

Mr. Akram holds a Master degree in Economics and has over 20 years of experience in the UN system, and the non-governmental organization in the humanitarian and development sector.
Prior to joining UNOPS in 2015 as the Regional Advisor on the United Nations Development Assistance Frameworks for Asia, Middle East and Europe, Mr. Akram worked in the United Nations Development Operations Coordination Office in New York where he worked on the operational guidance for the One Programme. Before that, he worked as the acting Head of the Resident Coordinator Office for Iraq while officiating the function of the Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor for Iraq. He has also worked as Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor for the United Nations Development Programme serving the Arab States Region and the Europe and Commonwealth of Independent States. Mr. Akram started his development career in Pakistan working for the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme in Northern Areas, as well as with Save the Children (United Kingdom) in Pakistan as well as in Central Asia. From 2016-2018, Mr. Akram worked as the Head of Programme at the UNOPS Operational Hub in Amman and was responsible for overseeing implementation of the UNOPS programme portfolio in all countries under the Hub including Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and the GCC. Since January 2019, Mr. Akram has been the Director for the UNOPS Operational Hub in Amman.

Mr Omar Ebrima Njie, a national of The Gambia, has been appointed as Country Director of the IFAD portfolio in Syria since April 2021. Prior to this assignment, Mr Njie worked for 10 years as the Senior Audit Officer in the Office of Audit and Oversight at IFAD Headquarters in Rome.
Mr Njie holds a Master of Business Administration degree in finance and entrepreneurship from the University of Louisiana at Monroe (Louisiana, USA), a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration degree from Berea Colleague (Kentucky, USA). He also earned several professional certifications in finance, accounting and audit, public procurement and information technology, with a long-standing experience in the rural development, government and private sector organizations in various countries in the region, the Asia and the Pacific Islands, USA, and across several countries in Africa. He has worked for more than 24 years in contributing to the efficiency and effectiveness of development-related projects, coordinating and leading teams in various areas of development work and private sector industries in banking, electric utilities and energy services and aviation.