NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 14 – The Italian permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Maurizio Massari, paid a visit to the new Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs, Li Junhua of China. Massari rehiterated the strong partnership between Italy and UN/DESA on the JPO program and the Italian Fellowship Program for sustainable development and capacity building for the SDGs. “Looking forward to working together to accelerate the goals implementation, both at the General Assembly, the ECOSOC and next year SDGs Summit”, said the Italian Ambassador.
Li was appointed at the end of July to succeed Liu Zhenmin of China, to whom the Secretary-General is grateful for his commitment and dedicated service to the Organization.
Mr. Li brings to the position perspectives and visions on fostering multilateral economic and social cooperation, with a commitment to engage with all parties to further implement the 2030 Agenda, including dedication to serve Member States. He has contributed to numerous meetings of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP); United Nations General Assembly; and the Security Council, as well as other multilateral meetings including the Group of 20; Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC); Asia–Europe Meeting (ASEM); and Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), among others. Before the appointment he was Ambassador of China to Italy and San Marino. Prior to this, he was Director-General of the Department of International Organizations and Conferences, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China from 2013 to 2019.
The Italian Junior Professional Officers Programme – also known as the JPO Programme – is a multilateral technical cooperation initiative sponsored by the Government of Italy and implemented by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN/DESA). It enables Italian citizens holding an advanced university degree (Master’s level) who have an excellent knowledge of English and Italian and who are not more than 30 years of age (31 or 33 for graduates in medicine and surgery) to gain work experience with international organizations for a period of two years. In the past four years a limited number of positions have been assigned to candidates from developing countries (Least Developed Countries and priority Countries for the Italian Development Cooperation).
The Fellowships Programme for Technical Cooperation Capacity Building and Human Resources Development is an initiative funded by the Directorate General for Development Cooperation of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It is implemented by UN/DESA and targets post-graduate Italian nationals. Initially rolled out in 1999 as a pilot scheme awarding 12 fellowships, the Programme has gradually grown into a fully-fledged initiative awarding on average 33 fellowships a year. To date, a total of 770 young Italian professionals have participated in the Programme. (@OnuItalia)
