Winnie Byanyima, wife to Uganda’s opposition leader Besigye, appointed new UNAIDS Executive Director

Ms Winnie Byanyima, who has experience on political leadership, humanitarian engagement and diplomacy spanning over 30 years, has gladly welcomed her appointment as the new UNAIDS Executive Director.

The United Nations Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, announced Ms Winnie Byanyima, wife to Uganda’s long term opposition leader Kisa Besigye, as the new UNAIDS Executive Director after a long and comprehensive selection process that involved a search committee made up of UNAIDS Programme Coordinating Board members. The UNAIDS Committee of Cosponsoring Organizations would later on make the final recommendations on the appointment to the UN Secretary General.

According to UNAIDS, having served as the Director of Gender and development at the United Nations Development Programme for seven years, Ms Winnie Byanyima will bring on board “a wealth of experience and commitment in harnessing the power of governments, multilateral agencies, the private sector and civil society  to end the AIDS epidemic around the world”. Ms Byanyima has been serving as the Executive Director of Oxfam International since 2013.

In her earlier days as a member of parliament in the National Assembly of Uganda, Ms Winnie Byanyima championed the rights and plight of the marginalized communities and women  and later on became the Director of Women and Development at the African Union Commission. At the AU, she worked on the protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, which is an international human rights instrument that eventually became an essential tool for reducing the disproportionate effect of HIV on the lives of women in the continent of Africa.