By Arul Louis

United Nations, Mar 16 (IANS): UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed Kavilmadam Ramaswami Parvathy, who led the World Food Programme's (WFP) relief operations in Turkey after last month's devastating earthquakes, as the world body's top official in Tajikistan.

Guterres' spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, who announced her appointment as the resident coordinator on Wednesday, said that the UN has kept its goal of "full gender parity among our 130 resident coordinators".

As the country director for the WFP in Turkey, she led the emergency response to provide food assistance to hundreds of thousands of people immediately after the devastating earthquakes in that country, according to the UN.

Earlier she had been the WFP's country director in Liberia and deputy director in Afghanistan.

During her career of over 30 years in international humanitarian and development work, Parvathy had worked with the Asia Pacific, West Africa, Regional and Global Headquarters of WFP, according to the UN.

Her experience includes strategic planning, risk management, conflict analysis and humanitarian access negotiations, the UN said.

She has a master's degree in Organizational Performance Management from the School of Management at Cranfield University in Britain.

Resident coordinators report directly to the secretary-general and as the highest-ranking representative of the UN Development System, they lead UN Country Teams.