By Jacqueline Charles, Miami Herald
Kenya’s national security minister, who oversaw her country’s leadership in deploying a multinational security force to gang-ridden Haiti, will lead one of the United Nations crime-fighting agencies.
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres announced Friday that he has appointed Monica Kathina Juma of Kenya as executive director of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime as well as director-general of the U.N. Office in Vienna. She succeeds Ghada Fathi Waly of Egypt.
A former foreign and defense minister of Kenya, Juma has served as national security adviser to Kenyan President William Ruto, and secretary to Kenya’s National Security Council since 2022. In a statement, the U.N. described her as “a strategic senior leader with a depth of expertise, experience and knowledge spanning public policymaking, execution and academia across critical areas of security, diplomacy and governance.”
No start date was announced for Juma, but John Brandolino, the director of the Division for Treaty Affairs at the office on drugs and crime, will continue to serve in his acting role until she arrives.
Brian Nichols, former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere in the Biden administration, applauded the appointment. During their interactions on Haiti, where the U.S. led efforts to get the Kenya police deployed to help fight armed gangs as part of the Multinational Security Support mission, Nichols said he found Juma to be “very smart and focused.”
“She asked the right questions and followed up on her tasks well. She is deliberate,” he said. “I think she will do a good job.”
Nichols said Brandolino is also “very good, so hopefully he will stay on under her.”
In addition to her involvement in getting the Kenya-led MSS deployed, Juma, who visited Haiti in 2024, was also heavily involved in the negotiations for the new Gang Suppression Force about to be deployed in Haiti. Designed by the Trump administration, the GSF was approved by the U.N. Security Council last fall and is expected to see its first military contingents deployed to Haiti on April 1.
In her new role, Juma will encounter a number of familiar issues, especially with respect to Haiti. Headed by Juan Marquez, the Port-au-Prince U.N. office on drugs and crime is among the U.N. agencies most actively engaged in the country at a time when growing attention is being paid to the links between armed gangs and transnational organized crime. Through its program on border management, anti-corruption and criminal justice, the office has been supporting Haitian institutions to address the broader issues that continue to fuel instability and violence in the country.
The office has also produced a series of analytical reports that have helped shed light on the transnational organized crime landscape affecting Haiti, including the trafficking of people, drugs, and firearms and ammunition, and the ways in which these illicit flows sustain and reinforce the activities of criminal groups operating in the country.
Before her current position, Juma served in several senior roles in her East Africa nation’s governments, including positions in the ministries of energy, defense, foreign affairs and interior. She also served as acting cabinet secretary for the Ministry of Petroleum and Mining and as principal secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs between 2016 and 2018.
From 2010 to 2013, Juma was Kenya’s ambassador to Ethiopia and Djibouti, and permanent representative of Kenya to the African Union, the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development and U.N. Commission for Africa. Her academic experience includes serving as executive director of the Research Africa Institute of South Africa; executive director of the Africa Policy Institute; an adjunct faculty member at the African Centre for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington DC ; and senior researcher/policy analyst at Safer Africa.
Juma holds a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom as well as a master’s degree and bachelor’s in government and public administration from the University of Nairobi, Kenya. In addition to English, she speaks Kiswahili and Kamba.
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