NIGEL FISHER
President & CEO, UNICEF Canada
Nigel Fisher became President & CEO of UNICEF Canada on November 1, 2005.
Formerly an Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations since 2002, Mr. Fisher was most recently Executive Director of the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), a position to which he was appointed in August 2003, by the U.N. Secretary-General. UNOPS, the only self-financing entity within the UN system, provides operations management services and capacity development support to assist other UN organizations, international financial institutions and developing countries to achieve their development and humanitarian goals. Mr. Fisher’s remit was to lead UNOPS to consistent, high-quality service provision and sustained financial viability.
Prior to this appointment, Mr. Fisher had served, since February 2002, as Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Relief, Recovery and Reconstruction in Afghanistan, holding the rank of Assistant Secretary-General. In this capacity, he was responsible for direct oversight of all UN humanitarian, reconstruction and development activities in Afghanistan, as well as for co-ordination with the Government and with the international assistance community.
Mr. Fisher was Regional Director for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in South Asia (1999-2002), overseeing UNICEF’s country programmes in South Asia and Afghanistan. He worked on development partnerships for children, which included a number of private sector initiatives and a partnership with MTV Asia. He served as UNICEF’s Special Representative for Afghanistan and neighbouring countries in the immediate aftermath of the events of 11 September 2001, coordinating and profiling UNICEF emergency operations in Afghanistan and neighbouring countries. Mr. Fisher worked with UNICEF for over 20 years in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, as well as at UNICEF headquarters in New York.
During 1998, he took leave from the UN and returned to his native Canada where, as United Nations Visiting Fellow at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, he advised the Minister and other senior officials on development of Canadian foreign policy regarding children in armed conflict, participating in the development of Canada’s peace-building initiative and human security strategy. He also led a joint Canada-Norway initiative to Algeria, to promote dialogue with that country on child rights and was active in the initiation of a trilateral programme of cooperation to support Algerian children exposed to extreme violence.
Prior to his sabbatical year in Canada, Mr. Fisher was Director of UNICEF’s Office of Emergency Programmes for three years, responsible for oversight of UNICEF’s humanitarian operations worldwide and advocated widely for recognition of children as zones of peace.
In 1997, he chaired the United Nations Inter-Agency Working Group of the Secretary-General’s Executive Committee on Humanitarian Affairs, overseeing the formulation of a series of recommendations, which formed the basis for reforms in the humanitarian operations of the United Nations.
Mr. Fisher has considerable experience in advocacy for the protection of civilians, especially children, in zones of conflict. As UNICEF Special Representative for Rwanda, he led that agency’s post-genocide recovery operations in the Great Lakes region of Africa (Rwanda, eastern Zaire, western Tanzania and southern Uganda) in 1994-1995. In 1990-1991, he coordinated the agency’s emergency response in the Middle East during and after the Gulf War, and initiated UNICEF lead-agency operations in northern Iraq after the Gulf War. He has been UNICEF Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa, and Representative in Rwanda, Yemen, Jordan, Syria, and the Occupied Territories of the West Bank and Gaza. He has also lived and worked in Nigeria, Mozambique, India and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic.
Mr. Fisher has worked extensively in the field of basic education and child development. From 1988 to 1990, he was Deputy Executive Secretary of the World Conference on Education for All, the global United Nations conference on basic education, which took place in Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990. He has published in the areas of basic education, leadership and impunity, child trauma recovery, child rights and protection of children in zones of conflict. He is, or has been, a board member of several academic and philanthropic institutions in Canada, the United States and Norway, and is past Honorary President of the Middle East Centre for Human Studies in Jordan.
In 1998, Canada awarded Mr. Fisher the Meritorious Service Cross in recognition of his leadership of UNICEF’s humanitarian work in Rwanda.