Moez Doraid, Regional Director, UN Women Regional Office in the Arab States
Mr. Moez Doraid (Egypt) is the Regional Director ad interim of UN Women Regional Office in the Arab States. Mr. Doraid is the Director of the Division of Management and Administration (DMA), UN Women. Between 1st May and November 2023 he was appointed as UN Assistant Secretary General a.i. and UN Women Deputy Executive Director for UN Coordination, Partnerships, Resources and Sustainability, a.i.
Mr. Doraid has held progressively responsible positions across the UN system over three decades working in Arab States, Asia, Africa, and at headquarters in New York.
For much of the period between October 2019, he served as UN Women’s Regional Director, a.i., for Arab States, then for East and Southern Africa. More recently, he served as UN Women’s Country Director, a.i., Afghanistan. Mr. Doraid has led the formulation and implementation of UN Women’s strategy to support Arab then East and Southern African countries in their emergency responses to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. As Regional Director he prioritized support to countries in crisis and post-conflict recovery, including in Syria, Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia, and Mozambique.
As Director of DMA since 2015, Mr. Doraid has enhanced the effectiveness and efficiency of UN Women’s global operations by cutting costs and simplifying procedures. He led the successful drive to increase UN Women’s share of the UN regular budget. He also helped shape and execute UN Women’s operational rapid response to COVID-19 as well as to the crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine.
From 2010 to 2015, he managed the implementation of UN Women’s systemwide and interagency mandate as Director of the Entity’s UN Coordination Division, along with serving as the Co-Chair of the Consultative Group on Combatting Discrimination and Inequality of the United Nations’ High-level Committee on Programmes (HLCP) and as Chair of the United Nations Development Group (UNDG) Task Team for Gender Equality.
Between 2007 and 2010, Mr. Doraid served as the Deputy Executive Director for Partnerships, Resource Mobilization and Operations of UNIFEM, effecting the tripling of the Fund’s revenue and delivery. He was the main UNIFEM interlocutor in the intergovernmental and interagency negotiations that led to the establishment of UN Women. Mr. Doraid also served for three terms as the Chair of the UNDG’s Working Group on Programming Issues.
Before joining UNIFEM, Mr. Doraid served as UN Resident Coordinator/UNDP Resident Representative in Kuwait, where he led the UN system’s support to Kuwaiti women in exercising their political rights after they won suffrage. He was also the main interlocutor between the large presence in Kuwait of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) and the Kuwaiti government.
During 2004–2005, he served as the UN Humanitarian Coordinator, UN Resident Coordinator, a.i., and UNDP’s Officer in Charge in Maldives. As Resident Coordinator, he commissioned and managed the production of a seminal report that was the major impetus for the country’s democratization. Following the 2004 tsunami, he coordinated international assistance to the relief and recovery effort, playing a key role in mobilizing substantial foreign assistance to the island nation.
Earlier, Mr. Doraid was a Senior Advisor, Regional Bureau for Arab States, UNDP, where he managed regional programmes for inclusive governance, environmental sustainability, information and communication technology for development, and women’s empowerment. Mr. Doraid was a co-author of the first seminal Arab Human Development Report, which identified the deficits in political participation, education, and women’s empowerment as the main impediments to the development of Arab countries.
Prior, Mr. Doraid established and headed UNDP’s Regional Resource Facility for Arab States based in Beirut, providing programmatic and policy support to UNDP Country Offices across the Arab region. In the 1990s, he co-authored six of UNDP’s Global Human Development Reports on poverty reduction, environmental sustainability, globalization, etc. Earlier, he served as Assistant Resident Representative, UNDP, Sudan, where he managed participatory poverty reduction programmes serving half a million people in Kordofan, war-stricken Darfur, and South Sudan.
Mr. Doraid has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the American University in Cairo; a Master’s in Public Administration focusing on development from Harvard University; and a Ph.D. in Economics from the Lebanese University.