Dr. Stephen Jackson (Ireland) serves as United Nations Resident Coordinator in Kenya. During his previous four-year (2017-2021) tenure as UN Resident Coordinator in Gabon, UN Gabon launched 7 new Joint Programmes, tripled its available development resources and helped launch an innovative $150m partnership with Norway for performance-based climate mitigation payments. His 30-year career includes 11 years of work in Sub-Saharan Africa and positions in the United Nations as:

• Chief of Policy Planning for the UN Department of Political Affairs (DPA);
• Head of Secretariat – Secretary-General’s 2015 High-Level Peacebuilding Review;
• Team Leader of DPA’s Mediation Support Unit;
• Chief of Staff of the UN Office in Burundi (BNUB);
• Team Leader of DPA’s Policy Planning Unit
• Team Leader of DPA’s Africa Great Lakes Team;
• Special Adviser to former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo as Special Envoy for the Great Lakes; and
• Senior Political Adviser with the UN Mission in the DR Congo (MONUC).

Before joining the UN, he held positions as the Deputy Director of the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum (CPPF) at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC) in New York, and as the Director of the International Famine Centre and a lecturer in Sociology at the National University of Ireland, Cork.

During the 1990s, he worked in humanitarian relief and development in Somalia, Rwanda and Angola. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology and a Master in Public Affairs from Princeton University, U.S.A., and a B.A. (Mod.) in Mathematics from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.