Steven Lauwerier was appointed as the new Director for Polio Eradication in UNICEF in November 2021, succeeding Akhil Iyer. 

Steven‘s international career covers over 25 years in a wide variety of functions and contexts. He has until recently been Senior Advisor for UNICEF’s Emergency Operations. From 2019 till 2021 he led the Humanitarian Review team that conducted an in-depth review of UNICEF’s humanitarian action and formulated a set of key recommendations that is reshaping UNICEF’s humanitarian capacity globally. Previously, Steven was UNICEF Representative in Somalia where under his leadership, UNICEF moved its Somalia Country Management Team from Nairobi to being fully functional inside Somalia after a 24-year absence. He also led the team in successfully responding to the famine threat and a major cholera epidemic in Somalia in 2017. Prior to that, he was a Representative in Madagascar and Deputy Representative in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cote d’Ivoire. He also served with the organization in Iran and started his UNICEF career in Southern Somalia.