Biographical Note

SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS OSCAR FERNANDEZ-TARANCO OF ARGENTINA

AS ASSISTANT SECRETARY-GENERAL FOR POLITICAL AFFAIRS

 

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Oscar Fernandez-Taranco of Argentina as Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs.

In this position within the Department of Political Affairs, Mr. Fernandez-Taranco will be responsible, inter alia, for overseeing the Department’s divisions dealing with the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East and West Asia, as well as the Decolonization Unit and the Division for Palestinian Rights.

Mr. Fernandez-Taranco brings a wealth of experience to this position, having worked in the United Nations system for over 25 years, both at Headquarters and in the field, managing increasingly complex development, political, peacebuilding and humanitarian operations in the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Europe.  From 1994 to 1998, Mr. Fernandez-Taranco served as Deputy Special Representative of the Administrator in the West Bank and Gaza Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People.  He was also the Deputy Assistant Administrator and Deputy Regional Director in the Regional Bureau for Arab States in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for five years.  From 1998 to 2001, he served as Resident Representative, United Nations Resident Coordinator and Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Haiti. Immediately prior to this appointment, Mr. Fernandez-Taranco had been serving as Resident Coordinator in the United Republic of Tanzania, leading the United Nations reform initiative of “Delivering as One”.  He had earlier served as a Country Officer in the United Nations Capital Development Fund and as Country Officer in the Latin American and Caribbean Division of the World Food Programme.  He started his career in the United Nations as a United Nations Volunteer in Benin, after a stint with Oxfam America.

Mr. Fernandez-Taranco was educated at Cornell University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied first economics and then urban-regional economic planning.

Born in 1957, he is married and has two children.

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