Lucia Elmi

Ms. Elmi is the Special Representative responsible for managing programmes and operations covering humanitarian, development, and normative areas of activity for UNICEF State of Palestine. Prior to assuming her current responsibilities in August 2020, Lucia served as Representative of UNICEF in Mali from 2017 to 2020 leading the implementation of a large humanitarian and development Country Programme of Cooperation in partnership with the Government and civil society. From 2014 to 2017, Lucia was Representative of UNICEF in Tajikistan. As such, she provided the overall direction for the implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the UNICEF Country Programme of Cooperation. In 2011-2014, she served as Representative to Mauritania leading the UNICEF team and the Country Programme of Cooperation with the Government of Mauritania addressing development, humanitarian and early recovery issues.

From 2009 to 2011, Lucia was the Chief of the Humanitarian Field Support Section, Office of Emergency Programmes with UNICEF New York Headquarters. In this capacity, she was responsible for the formulation of goals, objectives and strategies for the UNICEF Humanitarian Field Support. Prior to this, Lucia has held various positions within UNICEF New York Headquarters, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Lebanon and Amman.

Prior to joining UNICEF, from 1996 to 1998, Lucia served as Head of Office and Project Manager in Tuzla, Bosnia & Herzegovina with the Italian Consortium of Solidarity and later as Area Coordinator for Kosovo region in Pristina. In this capacity, she developed and implemented programmes in Early Childhood Development psychosocial support for the support of refugee and internally displaced persons.