UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed senior UN official Siddharth Chatterjee of India as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in China. Resident Coordinators are the UN Secretary-General’s representatives for development at the country level. They lead UN teams supporting countries to recover better from the COVID-19 pandemic through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Guterres appointed Chatterjee as the Resident Coordinator in China, with the host government’s approval. Chatterjee’s ”appointment follows confirmation from the Host Government, where he will take up his post in the middle of January of next year,” Spokesman for the Secretary-General, Stephane Dujarric said on Tuesday as he made the announcement.

”We congratulate our friend Siddharth,” Dujarric said. ”We proudly remain with full gender parity and North-South balance among all of our Resident Coordinators, who cover 162 countries and territories,” he said.

Chatterjee has more than 25 years of experience in international cooperation, sustainable development, humanitarian coordination, and peace and security, which he has acquired at the United Nations and externally, the world organisation said in a statement. Most recently, Chatterjee served as United Nations Resident Coordinator in Kenya, after holding other leadership positions across the organisation, including Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in Kenya, Regional Director for the Middle East and Europe for the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in Denmark and Chief of Staff in the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI).

He also held leadership positions with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in Indonesia, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan, and in United Nations peacekeeping operations with the United Nations Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina (UNMIBH). Chatterjee also served in the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent as the Chief Diplomat and Head of Resource Mobilization in Switzerland. Before joining the United Nations in 1997, he was a commissioned officer in India’s Army.

A TEDx speaker, he is a regular opinion contributor on humanitarian and development issues for a range of local, regional and international media outlets and journals, the UN statement added. Chatterjee holds a master’s degree in public policy from Princeton University in the United States, and a bachelor’s degree from the National Defence Academy in India.