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Per Engebak - Regional Director, ESARO

© UNICEF/HQ03-0264/Robert Bailey

Per Engebak

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Per Engebak is Regional Director of East and Southern Africa.  Prior to this Mr. Engeback was Regional Director in Latin America and the Caribbean Region, from 1999 to 2003, initially with Regional office in Bogota and during the last two years in Panama City.  In this capacity, he was responsible for the overall planning, coordination and implementation of a broad range of UNICEF programmes to improve the status of women and children in the Americas region.  He also served as UNICEF Representative in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in 1997 where he also held responsibility for UNICEF's liaison office to the Organization for African Unity and the Economic Commission for Africa.

Mr. Engebak began his career with UNICEF in October 1975 as Project Manager in the Sudan and was subsequently appointed as Project Officer in Jakarta, Indonesia in 1979.  In 1981, he was assigned to Mogadiscio, Somalia as Project Co-ordinator for Emergency, Water Supply and Sanitation, and in 1983, was transferred to New York as Senior Programme Officer in the Programme Division.  In 1987, he was appointed as Senior Programme Coordinator in the Guatemala Area Office, and in January 1991, was appointed Area Representative, based in Guatemala, for Central America, covering the countries of Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Panama.  He provided instrumental support to the Central American presidential Summit for Children, in which National Programmes of Action resulted in concerted political commitments to child survival and development in the region.  His advocacy and support for an early ratification of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in Central America as well as the support rendered to the Central American Parliament resulted in adaptation of new important national child protection laws. For his outstanding services for children in Guatemala, he was awarded Orden del Quetzal in 1994.  He held this position until his transfer to New York in 1994 as Chief, Americas Section in Programme Division where he was responsible for directing and managing the section which provided technical support and policy interpretation in programme planning, implementation and evaluation to countries in the Americas region. 

Mr. Engebak received his engineering degree in 1968 from Oslo Engineering School.  He embarked on an international career in 1973 with a Swedish company providing engineering consultancies in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Mexico.  He then joined the Lutheran World Federation Service in Geneva in 1974, where he was responsible for managing their emergency programme in Ethiopia, with special emphasis on intervention in water and sanitation.

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IMAGE RELEASE - CREDIT: © UNICEF HQ03-0264 This photograph of UNICEF Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean Per Engebak is available for use by bona fide news media organizations as part of reports or feature stories on UNICEF. Release permission is hereby granted for this purpose on the following conditions: - - Image content may not be changed by digital or any other means, except cropping. - Image may not be archived in any format or distributed to a third party by any non-UNICEF entity. No other rights than those specified are either granted or implied. THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST IN UNICEF.