UN-Habitat chief assumes office in Nairobi, Kenya
New Executive Director of UN-Habitat Anacláudia Rossbach of Brazil has assumed office at UN-Habitat’s headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya, effective 12 August 2024. The UN General Assembly elected Ms. Rossbach as Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in June 2024 following nomination by the United Nations Secretary-General.
“During my tenure, it will be important to establish the right coalitions and networks to support a strong and robust Organization able to leverage existing knowledge, expertise and resources globally,” said Anacláudia Rossbach.
“We’ve just come out of a pandemic. We are facing many conflicts. Disasters are becoming more and more frequent and having greater impact. The global housing crisis is affecting most countries in various ways: informal settlements, homelessness, reconstruction emergencies, affordability. But I’m optimistic. We can promote transformational change and overcome structural inequalities in our cities and human settlements, especially in the Global South with historical social and physical infrastructure gaps,” she added.
Ms. Rossbach is an economist with more than 20 years of experience working on issues of housing, including informal settlements, land and urban policies. Prior to her appointment, she headed the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy in Latin America and the Caribbean. From 2014 to 2022, she was with Cities Alliance as the Regional Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean. In that role, she promoted the transfer and exchange of knowledge and provided advisory services on housing and urban policies in the Global South. Ms. Rossbach was responsible for establishing the Urban Housing Practitioners Hub (UHPH), a network of experts, practitioners and researchers working in urban development and housing. In 2020 and 2021, she led the global programme on informality as a response to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ms. Rossbach has contributed to global discussions on urban policies at the Habitat III Conference in Quito, Ecuador, in 2016 and has spoken at all major UN events, including COP and the World Urban Forum. Her academic work includes numerous publications, teaching graduate classes, and professional training courses on housing and urban planning.
Anacláudia Rossbach succeeds Maimunah Mohd Sharif of Malaysia, who served as Executive Director of UN-Habitat from 2018 to 2024.
The United Nations General Assembly decided to transform the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements into the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) in resolution 56/206. The General Assembly also decided that the UN-Habitat secretariat should be headed by an Executive Director at the level of Under-Secretary-General, to be elected by the Assembly for a term of four years upon nomination by the Secretary-General after consultation with Member States.
