The new UNFPA Representative for Papua New Guinea, Ms Saira Shameem, has presented her credentials to the Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs as she starts her tenure leading the UN’s sexual and reproductive health agency in delivering a PNG where every pregnancy is wanted, every delivery is safe, and every young person’s potential is fulfilled. 

"We will be working closely with the Papua New Guinea National Department of Health to support improvements in maternal health services and family planning, as well as the National Statistics Office with technical support for population data and analysis,” said Ms Shameem.

The day following her presentation of credentials to Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Mr Elias Wohengu, Ms Shameem travelled to Buka on her first visit to see the projects being undertaken by UNFPA in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville. 

Saira has been involved in the field of health and human rights for over 27 years, spending the majority of this time within the UN system.

Prior to her appointment as UNFPA Representative to Papua New Guinea, she served for four years as the UNFPA Deputy Representative to Fiji and Deputy Director for the Pacific Sub-Regional Office, covering 14 island countries and territories, where she strengthened the delivery of results in a severely climate-affected context.

She has also served as a Political Scanning Specialist with the UNFPA Asia Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok, and as the Programme Advisor and Head-of-Office of UNFPA Malaysia, contributing towards advancing the UNFPA agenda on the intersectionality of socio-political and economic barriers to sexual and reproductive health and rights.

Before joining UNFPA, she was the Executive Director of the Asian-Pacific Resource and Research Centre for Women (ARROW), a regional non-governmental organization focused on improving the lives of marginalized women and girls, and their right to sexual and reproductive health.

She has also served in various capacities, including as Officer-in-Charge, of a regional UNDP governance programme for strengthening local government authorities and civil society for good urban governance, across the Asia Pacific.

A Malaysian national, Saira holds a Master of Science in Public Health for Development from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, a Post-Graduate Diploma in Health Science and Occupational Health and Safety from Edith Cowan University in Australia, and a Bachelor of Science in Physics, from Otago University in New Zealand.