Alan Doss
Alan Claude Doss (born 7 January 1945) is a British international civil servant who has spent his entire professional life in the service of the United Nations, working on peacekeeping, development and humanitarian assignments in Africa, Asia and Europe as well as at United Nations Headquarters in New York City. Early life Doss grew up in Cardiff, Wales. He graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He is married to Soheir Doss. They have three daughters and four granddaughters. Career at the United Nations Alan Doss began his UN career in 1966 in Kenya working for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the first of several assignments in Africa. Later appointments included posts as the UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Benin and the Democratic Republic of the Congo coordinating UN operational activities in those countries. In 1977, he joined the Asia Bureau at UNDP headquarters and developed the first UNDP co-operation program for Vietnam. In 1979, he was appointed as Deputy Resident Representative of UNDP in China on the opening of the first international development co-operation programme and office in that country. Doss then served as United Nations Resident Coordinator and Regional Representative of the UNDP in Bangkok, Thailand. At the same time, he was Director of the United Nations Border Relief Operation (UNBRO), in charge of United Nations assistance to hundreds of thousands of displaced Cambodians on the Thai-Cambodia border. During this period he was also the UN representative to the Mekong River Committee that manages South East Asia's greatest river network and was part of the negotiating team that restructured the institution into an inter-governmental commission with the re-admission of Cambodia to the group. He was then appointed Director of the UNDP European Office in Geneva, Switzerland, where he was charged with strengthening UNDP's outreach and fund raising work in Western Europe, focusing on advocacy for human development. He concurrently represented the UNDP at the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris where he was member of the group that drew up the DAC's landmark study on conflict, peace and development co-operation in 1997. Doss subsequently held the position of Director of the United Nations Development Group (UNDG), which was set up by Secretary General Kofi Annan to strengthen co-ordination among the UN organisations dealing with development under the leadership of the Administrator of UNDP. He worked on the design and implementation of reforms aimed to improve the performance of UN operational activities around the world. During that period he coordinated the UNDG's work on the follow-up to the UN global conferences of the nineties, which led to the pioneer publication "A Better World for All" published jointly by the UN, World Bank, IMF and OECD and subsequently, at the end of the decade, to the UN's Millennium Development Goals. In late 2000, Doss joined the UN peacekeeping mission in Sierra Leone, (UNAMSIL), as Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General while serving