By ALYX BARKER

ROME – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has named Ertharin Cousin as the next Executive Director of the Rome-based food agency.  

 Cousin, 55, will replace Josette Sheeran in April, when Sheeran’s five year term as Executive Director of the agency ends, it was announced today by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and José Graziano da Silva, the Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Sheeran will then assume the role of Vice Chairman of the World Economic Forum.

 The outgoing Director said: “Leading WFP is a great honour and a critical link to the world’s most vulnerable. I offer every support to Ertharin Cousin and wish her the greatest success at this critical time for the world’s most vulnerable nations and people.”

 Chicago-born and legally trained Cousin is currently the United States Ambassador to the UN agencies for Food and Agriculture in Rome, including the WFP, and has held that position since 2009.

 Ambassador Cousin said: "I am honored to join the World Food Programme and lead its mission, in close collaboration with other agencies in the United Nations family and with its many partners around the world. It is today in our power and our shared interest to bring an end to world hunger and to achieve the food security that will ensure the health, well-being and dignity of all. I look forward to the opportunities ahead."

 "We have known and appreciated her as a colleague in Rome and we now look forward to working with her in her new role,” said Ambassador Jim Harvey, President of WFP’s Executive Board.

 Prior to her post at the embassy, Cousin served as executive vice president and chief operating officer of the largest U.S. domestic hunger organization, Feeding America, then known as America's Second Harvest, and lead the organization's response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

 Cousin also worked for the Clinton administration for four years, including as deputy chief of staff for the Democratic National Committee and White House liaison at the State Department. In 1997 she received a White House appointment to the Board for International Food and Agricultural Development.

 U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said she is “delighted” to congratulate Cousin on her appointment and that during her time as Ambassador to the UN Agencies “she has been central to designing and implementing our country’s food security policies. I am confident that she will continue to be a powerful voice in the global fight against hunger and lend her energy, optimism and experience to the WFP.”

 However, some American conservatives have criticised Cousin in the past for being a "status quo" ambassador, who refused to comment on scandals which have surrounded the UN agencies recently, including that of the lavish lifestyle of Nigerian IFAD chief Kanayo Nwanze. Critics fear that the same attitude of silence will be carried into her role at WFP, and Cousin may do little to actually progress the agencies and steer them away from what is perceived by some as the trend of corruption.

 U.S. President Barack Obama said that the United Nations "will be well served by Ambassador Cousin's experience and commitment to the World Food Programme's vision of a world in which every citizen has access to the food they need to survive and to thrive."

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