Locations
Papua New Guinea
Our team
Nicholas Booth
Resident Representative
Mr. Nicholas Booth has been serving as the UNDP Resident Representative in Papua New Guinea since September 2023. Mr. Booth, who is a national of the United Kingdom, has served as an international civil servant under different UN agencies for over 20 years. He joined UNDP Papua New Guinea from UNDP's Regional Hub in Bangkok, where he took charge of managing the Regional Programme and Global Policy Network.
A barrister with law degrees from both Cambridge and Oxford Universities in the United Kingdom, Mr. Booth is a human rights lawyer by training and has devoted his career to solving issues surrounding rule of law, access to justice and conflict prevention. He has served in Kosovo and Vietnam and worked in and with UNDP Country Offices all over Asia and the Pacific as part of his regional job in Bangkok.
Edward Vrkic
Deputy Resident Representative
Mr. Vrkic is currently serving as UNDP’s Deputy Resident Representative to Papua New Guinea. He has served as the head of the UNDP’s Environment, Energy and Climate Change portfolio as well as the UN’s Senior Climate Adviser in Papua New Guinea. Prior to this, he was the Chief of Aid Operations for Australia's High Commission to Port Moresby where he also served as the Australian Government’s Humanitarian Response Coordinator.
Mr. Vrkic has previously served as a senior aid policy adviser to the Australian Government on Asia-Pacific foreign aid policy matters, overseas development assistance and climate change. He has held the position of Chief-of-Staff at the Pacific Islands Forum and a range of other senior diplomatic, program and policy positions with the Australian Agency for International Development, the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Private Sector.
He has a Master's Degree in International Relations (with distinction) from the Australian National University and a Bachelor of Arts with honours (first class) from the University of Wollongong. He has extensive experience delivering overseas development assistance programs, policy reform and humanitarian response in developing countries, particularly in small island developing states and fragile contexts.
For oversight, the Programme Steering Committee is the main entity to oversee implementation, monitoring and evaluation of the country programme. Technical working groups, comprising of Government technical staff, the United Nations and development partners, ensure that United Nations Development Programme is in line with government policies and planning instruments and complements programming by development partners.