Head of Resident Coordinator's Office in Thailand

In an Upper Middle-Income Country, the UN has a key role in ensuring a cutting-edge, integrated policy support to advance sustainable development, premised on partnerships that support innovation, digitization and foresight with young people, civil society, and the private sector.

Iwona Spytkowski, the Head of Resident Coordinator's Office in Thailand, has a key focus in supporting the UN’s partnership with youth to leverage inter-generational collaboration to promote innovative solutions for the SDGs in line with the Youth2030 Strategy. Iwona helped establish the SDGs Youth Panel, an advisory board to the UN Country Team and the Resident Coordinator, which she runs together with Teddy Bovornpong Vathanathanakul, the Communications Officer. The panel brings the voices of young leaders working on issues such as climate change, food waste, disability inclusion, gender, racism and inequality to the center of the UN’s work as well as domestic policy agendas and international fora. For instance, Iwona supported the Panel’s input to the UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework 2022-2026. She is liaising closely with the Office of the Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth to inform the Youth2030 strategy and contribute to the discourse on the new UN Youth Office that is being established through the Secretary General’s Our Common Agenda. As a result, Thailand is one of seven countries globally invited to participate in the ‘deep dive’ on UN youth engagement and is one of three top countries in Asia Pacific on the UN’s Youth Scorecard.