Lisa Singh appointed new UN resident coordinator |01 February 2023
Ms Singh presents her credentials to President Ramkalawan (Photo: Joena Meme)
UN will support Seychelles in a more sectoral manner
Lisa Simrique Singh of Nepal is the new United Nations resident coordinator for Seychelles and Mauritius.
She presented her credentials yesterday morning to President Wavel Ramkalawan at State House.
Ms Singh replaces Christine Umutoni who was accredited to Seychelles on January 23, 2018.
Ms Lisa Singh has over 24 years of international development experience in Asia and Africa. This includes country experiences in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Laos, Nepal, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Vietnam.
She recently served as the UNDP resident representative in Chad. Prior to that, she was based with UNDP in Mali as director of programme and deputy resident representative.
“It was my honour to meet the President today to present my credentials. We had a very fruitful discussion on the ongoing collaboration and the support the UN has been providing to Seychelles in meeting its ambition to make progress on the sustainable development goals where we have only seven years to make tangible progress. Already Seychelles is an inspiration for Africa and yet the last three years have illustrated there is a lot of global risks, complexity in terms of the impact of the war, the food and energy crisis, fertilizer crisis and how these impact small island states. We discussed about the collaboration and support that we can both offer.”
Ms Singh noted that that there are not many UN resident agencies in Seychelles but there is a gamut of non-resident agencies providing support to Seychelles.
“We intend to leverage them to work with Seychelles. Another issue for Seychelles is the financing – the country is a high income country and by default a lot of classic financing is not available. The UN has been supporting the small island developing states (Sids) to design their Multi-Dimensional Vulnerability Index to ensure that the high risk profile of these countries are taken into account so that the financing part is not linked to the GDP but also to the vulnerability.”
Answering a question regarding how to address the major issues in Seychelles such as drugs and social issues in the grassroots, Ms Singh shared that “at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for UN are five critical dimensions: people, prosperity, planet, partnership and peace. People are really at the heart of the national and resilience agenda. Seychelles has been transformed into a leading country in the region and the economic trajectory of the country is good. The challenge now is how to take into account the global risks in Sids. The pandemic showed us how the economic, social and health sectors were affected and we intend to support Seychelles in a more sectoral manner with the consultation with different groups,” explained Ms Singh.
During her visit, Ms Singh will call on other local dignitaries such as the vice-president, ministers, deputy Speaker of the National Assembly and vice-chancellor of the University of Seychelles.
The UN resident coordinator will be based in Port Louis, Mauritius.
Vidya Gappy