Vice President of ECOSOC

H.E. Hilale has been Morocco's Permanent Representative to the UN in New York since April 2014. He is a career diplomat who has served in various posts around the world. Before his appointment in New York, he served as the Permanent Representative of Morocco to the UN in Geneva starting in 2008. From 2005 to 2008, he served as the General Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation. From 1996 to 2001, he served in several diplomatic posts. including as Ambassador to Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and Indonesia. Before that he served as a Member of the Cabinet of the Secretary for Foreign Affairs and Cooperation and a Member of the International Committee of Legal Experts, in charge of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Use of Chemical Weapons. From 1976 to 1991, Ambassador Hilale served in the Moroccan Embassies in Algiers, Monrovia, Addis Ababa and Geneva. Ambassador Hilale graduated from the Mohammed V University in Rabat in 1974 with a bachelor’s degree in political science.

Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Food and Nutrition

David was a Lecturer in Nutrition and Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (1982-1985) and Senior Lecturer in Health Systems at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (1985-1989). He joined the United Kingdom Government Foreign Office (Overseas Development Administration) as Senior Health Adviser for East Africa (1989–1990) and Chief Health and Population Adviser (1990-1997). He became Director for Human Development in the UK Department for International Development (DFID, 1997–1999). In 1999 David moved into the United Nations system starting as an Executive Director at the World Health Organization responsible for the Roll Back Malaria Project and the Office of the Director-General. He was Special Representative of the WHO Director-General for Health Action in Crises (2002-2005). He was then appointed as UN System Senior Coordinator for Avian and Pandemic Influenza (2005-2014), United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Food Security and Nutrition (2008-2014), Coordinator of the Movement for Scaling Up Nutrition (2011-2014, as Assistant Secretary-General), UN S-G’s Special Envoy for the West Africa Ebola Outbreak Response (2014-2015), and UN S-G’s Special Adviser for the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and Climate Change (2016 - 2017,as Under-Secretary-General)). He was appointed, by the Director-General of WHO, as chair of the expert group on the reform of WHO’s work on outbreaks and emergencies in 2015. In October 2018, David received the World Food Prize together with Lawrence Haddad for leadership on nutrition.

David is currently Co-Director (since mid-2019) and Chair of Global Health at the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College, London. He is Strategic Director of the Swiss-based social enterprise 4SD (Skills Systems and Synergies for Sustainable Development), established in 2017, training and mentoring leaders for sustainable development. Since June 2018 David has curated the Food Systems Dialogues as a contribution to the transformation of food systems: they have involved more than 1700 leaders in 29 locations within the last 18 months. From July 2018 David contributed to preparations for the UN’s September 2019 Climate Action Summit. David co-facilitated the coalition that advanced the Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) workstream (co-led by China and New Zealand). David is co-chair of the forum on Climate Change and Health which will complete its work at the World Innovation Summit for Health, November 2020. From March 2020, David is appointed Special Envoy of WHO Director General on COVID-19.

Global CEO and Director General, AMREF Health Africa Group

Since 2015, Dr. Gitahi has been the Global CEO of Amref Health Africa (Amref). But long before Dr. Gitahi led the largest Africa-based healthcare nonprofit, he grew up on his mother’s coffee farm in Nyeri, a central province in Kenya. At 10 years old, when not in school, you could find Githinji working side by side with his mother on their one acre farm, where they earned about $100-$200 per year.

“Occasionally when our yield was low, we would go to other farms and pick their coffee for them for very little money. Sometimes we would pick and carry up to 520 kilos to the factory for another family. Most families like ours had their own children picking at their farms on Saturdays, but wealthier families often needed extra labor, so it was common to work on their farms after picking at your own farm for extra coin.”
Until his appointment at Amref, Dr. Gitahi was the Vice President and Regional Director for Africa of Smile Train International, where he successfully established partnerships for long-term sustainability with various African governments. Dr. Gitahi began working as a Medical Doctor and moved slowly into management within the hospital environment where he discovered his passion for marketing.

This led him to senior positions at GlaxoSmithKline and Madison Insurance, where he established their medical division to create health insurance packages. He later joined the Nation Media Group, where he was the Managing Director for Monitor Publications in Uganda as well as General Manager for Marketing and Circulation in East Africa. He also held progressively senior positions at Avenue Group and within the insurance industry. Dr. Gitahi has a Masters in Business Administration, majoring in Marketing. As a Medical Doctor, Dr. Gitahi practiced Gynecology, Pediatrics and Internal Medicine.

At Amref, Dr. Gitahi has led the organization through a lenses of “One Amref” to raise revenues from $80 million to $120 million, opened opportunities for social enterprise that resulted in net profits of $2 million, and up-held our reputation of that of a world-class organization.

Dr. Gitahi is also the Steering Committee Co-Chair of UHC2030—a World Bank and World Health Organization global initiative for universal health coverage. Dr. Gitahi is interested in the key drivers of lasting health change and believes in the focus on universal health coverage (UHC) as the roadmap to achieving good health for all people. He says: “UHC is key. It reflects the challenges we face in affordability, accountability, accessibility and integration of services, leadership, governance and management.” UHC2030 will convene over 150 delegates from 23 countries, international agencies, and academia to coincide with the United Nations General Assembly this fall. In addition, he was recently appointed as a member of the governing Board of the Africa Centre’s for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

Dr. Gitahi’s undying passion, coupled with his authenticity and charisma, means he is in high-demand for leadership roles and speaking engagements across the world..

former Finance Minister of Cabo Verde and member of Committee of Experts on Public Administration (CEPA) and the UN High-Level Advisory Board (HLAB) on Economic and Social Affairs

Cristina Duarte has 34 years of professional experience, most of which is in leadership and senior management positions in government and in the private sector. She served Cabo Verde as Minister of Finance, Planning and Public Administration from 2006 to 2016.

Since 2018 Mrs. Duarte has been a Member of the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration, established by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). She is also a Member of the United Nations High-Level Advisory Board on Economic and Social Affairs and Visiting Research Fellow, at WITS University, School of Governance, South Africa.

Over her long career, she has played an instrumental role in public policy making and in the private sector. Before serving as Minister, she was the Director of a national reform programme on private sector development and competitiveness. She has also been Director for Planning and Studies in the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. In the private sector, she rose to become Vice President of Citibank, a world class financial institution. Before then, she provided advice to several international financial organizations, as well as non-governmental organizations.

Mrs. Duarte presented her vision for Africa’s transformation as a final round candidate in the 2015 election for the Presidency of the African Development Bank wide range of senior decision-makers both in government and in business around the world. She is a Member of President Paul Kagame’s Advisory Committee on African Union Reforms. She is a Member of the Board of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) and she is a Member of the Board of the Institute of African Leadership for Sustainable Development (UONGOZI Institute). In 2014, 2015 and 2016 she has been considered one of the “100 African Personalities” by Financial Afrik.

Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights and Head of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR)

Ilze Brands Kehris assumed her functions as Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights on 14 January 2020, heading the UN Human Rights Office in New York. Ms. Brands Kehris combines extensive expertise in political science, conflict prevention and human rights, with a specialisation in minority rights, and long-standing experience in intergovernmental fora and with civil society organisations.
From 2017 to 2019, Ms. Brands Kehris served as independent Expert Member of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the treaty body monitoring the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Between 2016 and 2019, she served as a senior research fellow at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund University, in Sweden.
She has previously held several leadership positions in national and regional level human rights organisations, including as Member and Chairperson of the Management Board of the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency.
Ms. Brands Kehris also held the positions as Director of the Office of the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, first Vice-President and Member of the Advisory Committee on the Council of Europe Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities, and Member of the Management Board and Vice-Chairperson of the Executive Board of the European Union Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia. She also served as Director of the Latvian Centre for Human Rights.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations from Mills College in California, USA, a Master of Arts in Political Science (International Relations) from Columbia University in New York, USA, where she also pursued Ph.D. studies.
Ms. Brands Kehris, who is Latvian, speaks English, Russian, French, Latvian and Swedish.

Professor and Deputy Director, German Development Institute

Imme Scholz is Deputy Director of the German Development Institute (DIE) and Honorary Professor of the Centre for Ethics and Responsibility at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg. Imme studied sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. She joined DIE as a researcher in 1992 and worked on trade regulations for environmental requirements to products and production processes. With her PhD she tried to understand the limited effect of certification schemes for sustainable forestry on the sustainability of the timber trade in the Brazilian Amazon region. From 1999-2002 she was an environmental policy advisor in the Amazon region of Brazil on behalf of German development cooperation, as part of a large pilot programme for the protection of Brazilian rainforests. On her return to DIE she took over the newly founded environmental department where she created a research group on adaptation to climate change. In 2009 she was appointed as deputy director of the Institute. Imme is very active at the science-policy interface, within the T20, the European Think Tanks Group and in policy dialogues with China on sustainable development. She is deputy chair of the German Sustainability Council, a member of the Steering Committee of SDSN Germany and of the German Committee Future Earth (DKN Future Earth).

Founder and Coordinator, Focus of Disabled Persons, Kenya (Stakeholder Group of Ageing / Stakeholder Group of Persons with Disabilities)

Jane is an older person and a wheelchair user who has dedicated years of her life as an activist to raise the voices of people of all ages with disability and bring messages from more hard to reach communities to decision makers. She is an active member of an Older Persons Association in Kasarani, Nairobi Kenya, and has participated in several international forums since 2016. In 2016 she represented Older Persons with disabilities in the WHO GATE Meeting in Geneva Switzerland, in 2018 she was a speaker at the Global Disability Summit in London on the Theme "Leaving no One Behind", as well as several events on human rights, disabilities and ageing in Africa and beyond.