United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has appointed Ramiz Alakbarov of Azerbaijan as the new Deputy Special Coordinator and Resident Coordinator at the Office of the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process (UNSCO).

Alakbarov will also serve as the Humanitarian Coordinator.

Ramiz Alakbarov brings more than 30 years of extensive international experience in executive leadership, strategic planning and policy-making, development programming and management, and humanitarian response. He has been serving as the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Ethiopia since 2023. Prior to that, he held the position of Deputy Special Representative for Afghanistan with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), where he was also the United Nations Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator, from 2021 to 2023. In Afghanistan, he also served as the UN Resident Coordinator ad interim in 2020.

Alakbarov has served in several positions within the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), including as Deputy Executive Director for Management and United Nations Reforms (ad interim), and Director of the Policy and Strategy Division in New York, Country Representative in Haiti, Deputy Regional Director of the Regional Office for Arab States in Cairo, and Head of the Office in South Sudan. Prior to these positions, he served in various roles at UNFPA supporting country programmes in the Arab States, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia. His roles included Programme Officer covering Sudan, Somalia, and Iraq, and Humanitarian Response Officer for Operations in Afghanistan, Palestine, and the Great Lakes Region. From 1992 to 1995, he was an Assistant Professor at Azerbaijan Medical University and a practicing physician.