UNITED NATIONS (CMC) — The United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres on Friday announced the appointment of Nicole Flora Boni Kouassi of Côte d’Ivoire as his new deputy special representative for the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH) and resident coordinator in Haiti.

She will also serve as a humanitarian coordinator. Boni Kouassi succeeds Ingeborg Ulrika Ulfsdotter Richardson of Sweden, whom the secretary-general thanked for her “dedicated service and steadfast commitment to the United Nations”.

Boni Kouassi brings over 22 years of UN experience to this position, with extensive experience in development, peace and security, and humanitarian work.  She has been serving as the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative in Niger since 2022.

Prior to that, she held the position of UNDP resident representative in Burundi between 2019 and 2022 and served as resident and humanitarian coordinator ad interim in 2021.

Previously, she served in various leadership roles, notably as UNDP deputy resident representative in Djibouti and Niger, and as senior UN coherence specialist in New York.

Boni Kouassi holds a Doctorate in Medicine from the Université Félix Houphouët-Boigny, formerly known as Université de Cocody in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire and a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland.

In addition to her native Baule, she is fluent in English and French.