Speaker Information

Panel Discussion 1

Panelist

Catherine Andela

  • Chief, Gender Unit, UN Department of Peace Operations (UNDPO)

    Catherine Andela is the chief of gender unit and senior gender adviser in the department of peace operations in the united nations headquarters in NY. She brings over 25 years of experience working on protection and gender equality programming in humanitarian and development settings. Prior to joining DPO, she was Chief of the MINUSMA’s Gender Unit since June 2019 and worked for a decade as Senior Inter Agency GBV and Gender Adviser across West and central Africa, Middle East including Turkey, Jordan, Syria and Yemen.

    She established and headed the Peace, Security & Humanitarian Section at UN Women West and Central Africa Regional Office in 2013. She also served at OCHA Cote d’Ivoire as humanitarian coordinator and Head of the information management unit and prior to that worked with OSCE and IOM in germany and switzerland on out-of-balkan-countries elections, repatriation’s programs and gender related migration including trafficking. Her research and interests are the protection and political participation of women with a focus on peace processes and gender responsive DDR programs and the advancement of gender equality.

    She holds a master’s in library sciences & information management from Kölner Fachhochschule fur Bibliotheks-und Dokumentationswesen and a master in sociolinguistics from the university of cologne in germany.

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