UNICEF”s new Lebanon envoy visits Sleiman
The newly appointed representative in Lebanon of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Ray Virgilio Torres visited on Monday Lebanese President Michel Sleiman in the summer headquarters of the presidency in the Beiteddine Palace.
“It is a great honor for me to meet President Sleiman. I have discussed with the president the situation of children and youth in Lebanon. I assured the president that UNICEF was firmly committed in its new country program for 2010-2014 to support the government’s efforts in improving the well-being of children and youth in the poorest areas of the country,” Torres told reporters.
Torres, a national of Honduras who presented his letter of credentials on September 1, 2009, to Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh, comes to the Middle East region with 22 years of experience in UNICEF and a broad exposure to different development and humanitarian situations in a number of countries around the world.
Before his arrival in Lebanon, Torres served as a UNICEF representative in Moldova.
Torres worked for several years as manager of projects providing support to children affected by armed conflict.
In Rwanda, following the 1994 genocide he coordinated project targeting tracing and reunifying children with their parents, as well as children accused of genocide.
In Sierra Leone he worked in projects aiming at demobilizing child soldiers and to providing psycho-social support to children personally affected by the conflict.
Torres, who joined UNICEF in 1987 in his home country of Honduras, has occupied a number of different administrative and project functions.
Prior to his positions in the international organization, he worked at the Foreign Relations Ministry of the Republic of Honduras as an official translator and protocol officer.
Torres holds a degree in law from the University of Bourgogne in France. He also studies international relations at the Institut d’Etudes politiques of Paris and recently graduated from the French Ecole Nationale d’Administration.