| New UNHCR Representative in the Kyrgyz Republic Johann Siffointe assumed his duties |
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On 18 January 2012, Mr. Johann Siffointe, Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Kyrgyzstan handed over his Letter of Presentation to H.E. Mr. Ruslan Kazakbaev, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Kyrgyz Republic. Mr. Johann Siffointe, a French national with a Masters of International Law from Oxford University, has been working for the UN Refugee Agency since 1994 in a number of countries including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Myanmar, Cambodia, Papua New Guinea, Thailand and UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. Mr. Siffointe has extensive experience in managing emergency response and during 2006-2010 he worked in numerous emergency operations as UNHCR Senior Emergency Coordinator. In that capacity he has already worked in the south of Kyrgyzstan during July-October 2010, coordinating the UNHCR emergency response in general and the UNHCR emergency transitional shelter programme in particular. During their meeting, Minister Kazakbaev noted the long-standing fruitful cooperation between Kyrgyzstan and UNHCR and expressed his hope that this cooperation will further improve. The UN Refugee Agency has been present in Kyrgyzstan since 1995. Its assistance to refugees, returnees, stateless and internally displaced people in the country now exceeds 60 million USD. Its main objectives are to monitor and support Kyrgyzstan’s implementation of its commitments to protect refugees, to help prevent and reduce statelessness, and to support reconciliation and sustainable peace. |
