UN chief appoints new head for Asia Pacific

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Sri Lanka's Kanni Wignaraja as the new director of the Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific at UN Development Program (UNDP), his press office said Monday.

Wignaraja succeeds Haoliang Xu of China, who has been recently appointed as director of UNDP's Bureau for Policy and Program Support.

Wignaraja recently served as director of the Bureau for Management Services of UNDP and as special adviser to the UNDP administrator. Earlier, she was working as the director of the UN Development Operations Coordination Office from 2014 to 2018, the office said in a statement.

Wignaraja holds a Master's degree in public administration (development economics) from Princeton University and a