Melanie Hauenstein assumed her function as United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Resident Representative for Lebanon in February 2022. Prior to that she served as Regional Adviser in UNDP’s Arab States Bureau in New York, where she managed the country desks for Yemen, Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti, Libya and the Maghreb. From June to September, she served as UNDP Resident Representative a.i. for Libya. 

She joined the United Nations in 2005, as an electoral affairs officer working on the first democratic elections in DR Congo. In Congo, she also worked for the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General and Resident/Humanitarian Coordinator, the same position she held in Sudan in 2009. In 2010, she joined UNDP’s Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery in New York where she later also worked for UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. In 2014, she joined the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA). First, as Deputy Head of Office and Team Leader for Stabilisation & Recovery in Gao and then as the Regional Head of Office in Mopti. In 2016, she served as the Senior Stabilization Adviser in the UN peacekeeping mission in DR Congo (MONUSCO).

Before joining the United Nations, Melanie worked in Central America for an NGO on rural development and for UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Costa Rica and in Germany for cultural management firms.

She holds an MSc in Population and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science and studied international politics, sociology and economics in Regensburg, Leipzig and Paris. She speaks English, German, Spanish and French.