Biography|Elizabeth Dowdeswell — Nominated Here on 4 December to Lead UNEP

Six months after the Rio Earth Summit, Boutros Boutros-Ghali sent a personnel notice to the General Assembly.

UN press release SG/A/521, also issued as BIO/2729 and HE/797, is dated 4 December 1992.

It nominates Elizabeth Dowdeswell of Canada as Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme.

The Dag Hammarskjold Library later filed a companion notice, SG/A/516, and the March 1993 Secretary-General's bulletin ST/SGB/258 as the administrative trail.

The Assembly elected her that December.

A GRID-Arendal release issued when her successor was chosen records that she held the post from 1 January 1993.

She followed Mostafa Kamal Tolba of Egypt, who had run UNEP for seventeen years.

UNEP's own later leadership page lists her as the programme's third Executive Director, 1992 to 1998.

Canadian and university biographies call her the first woman to hold the chair.

The director list before her is Maurice Strong and Tolba.

The pin is the General Assembly building at United Nations Headquarters, First Avenue at 42nd Street.

The election happened in this complex, not in Nairobi.

Nairobi is where the job then had to be done.

Photo: LGOntario, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons