The UN Resident Coordinator Office

The Resident Coordinator’s Office supports the work of the UN Resident Coordinator and coordinates activities of the UN Country Team in its engagement with the Government as defined by the UN Development Cooperation Strategy (UNDCS).

Türkiye is currently implementing United Nations Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF) 2021 - 2025, which is the medium-term results framework that describes the response of the UN system to national development priorities. UNSDCF describes how the UN country team will contribute to the achievement of development results based on a common country analysis and the UN comparative advantage.

The Resident Coordinator is leading and strategically positioning the United Nations country team in Türkiye to respond to the current national priorities.  The Office has five core functions:

• Strategic Planning
• Economics
• Partnerships and development finance
• Data and results management and reporting
• Communications and advocacy

The UN Resident Coordinator in Türkiye 

Dr. Babatunde A. Ahonsi is the UN Resident Coordinator in Türkiye. He has more than 25 years of experience in international development. Most recently, he served as UN Resident Coordinator in Sierra Leone until November 2023 and previously as the acting UN Resident Coordinator in China until September 2020. Prior to this, he served as UNFPA Representative in China from January 2017 to June 2020, while concurrently serving as Country Director for Mongolia. He was UNFPA Representative in Ghana from 2014-2016.

Before joining the UN, Dr Ahonsi was the Population Council’s Country Director for Nigeria from 2010 to 2014. He also served as a Trustee of International Women’s Health Coalition, New York (2010-2014) and on the inaugural Board of the UN University’s International Institute for Global Health, Kuala Lumpur (2008-2014). He was a guest researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute, Uppsala, Sweden in 2009. From 1997 to 2008, he worked as Senior Program Officer of the Ford Foundation in West Africa. He had also lectured at federal universities in Ilorin, Calabar and Lagos, Nigeria during the 1980s and 1990s.

Dr. Ahonsi is a national of Nigeria and holds a Bachelor of Science (BSc) in Sociology (First Class Honors) from the University of Lagos. He also holds a Ph.D. in Population Studies from the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK