Amina Mohammed Confirmed as UN Deputy Secretary General

Amina Mohammed 

The incoming UN secretary general, António Guterres, has announced that Nigeria’s Environment Minister, Amina Mohammed, will be his deputy and appointed two other women to key leadership posts.

Guterres has made achieving gender parity at the world body a priority of his tenure, which begins on January 1, 2017. Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, a senior Brazilian foreign ministry official, will serve as Guterres’s chief of staff, and Kyung-wha Kang of South Korea has been appointed to the new position of special adviser on policy.


Mohammed had been widely tipped to become UN deputy secretary general after she led successful negotiations on the sustainable development goals – 17 targets agreed by the United Nations to end extreme poverty by 2030. She succeeds Jan Eliasson of Sweden.

Viotti, currently Brazil’s undersecretary for Asia and the Pacific, has previously served as ambassador to Germany and as UN envoy. She helped shape Brazil’s role within the Brics club of emerging economies and has worked as director for human rights in the foreign ministry.

Kang is currently head of Guterres’s transition team and has served as deputy UN aid chief since April 2013. Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal who led the UN refugee agency for 10 years, won election as UN chief despite calls from some member states for a woman to be chosen for the first time in the organisation’s 71-year history.

He said after taking the oath of office on Monday that “gender parity is a must” and “will become a clear priority from top to bottom in the UN”. Guterres will succeed Ban Ki-moon, a former South Korean foreign minister, who led the UN through two five-year terms.

It’s an honour to Nigeria – PMB 

President Muhammadu Buhari has welcomed the appointment of the minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed, to join the next United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres as his deputy, saying it is an honour to Nigeria.

Speaking with the in-coming secretary- general, Mr Guterres, who called to inform President Buhari of his decision to name Mohammed as the deputy secretary-general earlier this evening, the President used the opportunity to reiterate his support and congratulations to Mr Antonio Guterres on his upcoming tenure in the service.

In a statement by his senior special assistant on media, Garba Shehu, he endorsed the excellent selection of Amina J. Mohammed as the next deputy secretary general of the United Nations.

“By her appointment, Nigeria has been honored,” said the President. President Buhari thanked Mohammed for her untiring contribution to transform Nigeria and said he looked forward to sustained collaboration between the UN and Nigeria.

He said he had no doubt that she would continue to make Nigeria proud at the global level. It is expected that the Mohammed will be transitioning to her new role in March 2017.

In the meantime, it is expected that she will continue to lay strong foundations with various important ongoing initiatives critical to the government’s success in the Environment sector.

These include, but not limited to implementation of our Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Climate Agreement, the successful launch of the Sovereign Green Bonds in 2017, the ongoing Ogoni clean-up and development of the Great Green Wall.