Karen Koning Abuzayd- UNRWA Deputy Commissioner- General:
In August 2000, Karen Abuzayd became an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, appointed to the Post of Deputy Commissioner-General of the UNRWA( the United Nations Relief and Works Agency). From her base in Gaza, she helps to oversee the education, health , social services and micro –enterprise programs for 4.1 million Palestinian refugees. Since Sep 2000, her work has concentrated on providing emergency assistance to, and generating employment for the victims of the current crisis in the West Band and Gaza.
Before joining the UNRWA, Karen worked for the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for 19 years. She began her humanitarian career in Sudan in 1981, dealing with Ugandan, Chadian and Ethiopian refugees fleeing from war and famine in their own countries. From Sudan she moved to Namibia in 1989 to help coordinate the return of apartheid era refugees, a successful repatriation operation which led to elections and independence. A year later the Liberian civil war erupted and Karen moved to Sierra Leone to head the UNHCR office in Freetown initiating a new emergency response that of settling 100.000 Liberians in 600 villages along the Liberian/Sierra Leone border.
From 1991- 93 in UNHCR's Geneva Headquarters, Karen directed the South African repatriation operation and the Kenya – Somali cross border operation. She left Kenya to go to Sarajevo Chief of Mission for two years during the Bosnian war.
Four million displaced and war affected people were assisted by UNHCR's airlift and convoy activities, while thousands more were protected from ethnic cleansing by a UNHCR presence. Karen's last four years in UNHCR were spent as Chef de Cabinet to High Commissioner Sadako Ogata and as Regional Representative for the United States and Caribbean , where she focused on funding, public information and the legal issues of asylum seekers.
Before joining UNHCR, Karen lectured in Political Science and Islamic Studies at Makerere University at Kampala, Uganda and at Juba University in southern Sudan. She earned her B.SC at DePauw University in Indiana and her M.A. in Islamic Studies at McGill University in Canada. She is married to a Sudanese professor and has two children.
