Secretary-General appoints James W. Rawley as Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process and Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for the OPT – SecGen press release

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today announced the appointment of James W. Rawley of the United States as Deputy Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, at the level of Assistant Secretary-General.  Mr. Rawley will also serve as United Nations Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for the Occupied Palestinian Territory.  

The new Deputy Special Coordinator succeeds Maxwell Gaylard of Australia, who completed his assignment on 31 August.  The Secretary-General is grateful to Mr. Gaylard for his longstanding and distinguished service in the United Nations.

Mr. Rawley brings over 30 years of humanitarian and development experience with the United Nations, as well as a crisis prevention perspective acquired in a number of complex situations, including in Yemen and Myanmar, having served most recently as the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Egypt.  

Mr. Rawley has also served as Deputy Director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery (BCPR) in Geneva.  In addition, he served as United Nations Resident Coordinator in Yemen, as Senior UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Myanmar and as UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Honduras and Nicaragua.  

Mr. Rawley was educated in New York at Columbia University and at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Born in 1953, he is married and has two children.

For information media • not an official record