Fatma Samoura

Fatma Samoura
UN official Fatma Samoura (right) with George Clooney and colleague Marie-Sophie Reck in Abéché, Chad (2008)
FIFA Secretary General
Incumbent
Assumed office 20 June 2016[1]
Preceded by	Markus Kattner (acting)
Personal details
Nationality	Senegalese
Occupation	Diplomat Executive officer

Fatma Samba Diouf Samoura^[2] (born 1962 in Senegal) is a Senegalese senior United Nations (UN) official. She was appointed as first female FIFA's Secretary General on 13 May 2016^[3] and assumed her post on 20 June 2016.^[1]

Career

After joining the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in 1995, she served as Country Director for WFP in Djibouti and Cameroon^[4] and also worked at the WFP headquarters in Rome. She covered numerous complex emergencies, including Kosovo, Liberia, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, and Timor-Leste (East Timor).

On 1 November 2007, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in consultation with the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes, appointed her as Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator (DHC) for eastern Chad. She is based in the town of Abéché, located approximately 80 kilometres west of the border with the Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region. Chad currently hosts over 280,000 refugees and over 170,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), most of whom are in the eastern region,^[5] and she was tasked with working for their return.^[6] The official's functions consist in providing support and guidance to a team composed of seven United Nations agencies and over 40 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in eastern Chad.^[5]

Work at FIFA

In June 2016 she assumed the roll of FIFA Secretary General responsible for overseeing commercial and operational side of the organization. She replaced Jerome Valcke who has been implicated in corruption allegations in his roll.^[7]

Within months of landing the job has created outrage in the United Kingdom and around the world^[8] over threats and subsequent protests against various UK Football Associations regarding the players, fans and venues for paying tribute to the +100,000,000 million people who died in both World War I and World War II on the internationally observed Remembrance Day.

Prior to the November 11th matches, Fatma officially declared on 03 November 2016, England, Scotland and Wales would be punished if they wore the poppy on remembrance day as FIFA classes it as political symbol. “Britain is not the only country that has been suffering as a result of war,” she said. “Syria is an example. My own [African] continent has been torn by war for years. The only question is ‘why are we doing exceptions for just one country and not the rest of the world".^[9]

The Prime Minister of Britain Theresa May condemn FIFA and told Parliament that Fatma's decision was "utterly outragous" ^[10]

Fatma has now moved onto to targeting Football supporters for defying FIFA by holding up Poppy cards at a recent match.

Personal life

Fatma Samoura is married and has three children.^[5]

References