Fatma Samoura

Career

After joining the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) in 1995, she served as Country Director for WFP in Djibouti and Cameroon and also worked at the WFP headquarters in Rome. She covered numerous complex emergencies, including Kosovo, Liberia, Nicaragua, Sierra Leone, and Timor-Leste (East Timor).

On 1 November 2007, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in consultation with the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes, appointed her as Deputy Humanitarian Coordinator (DHC) for eastern Chad. She is based in the town of Abéché, located approximately 80 kilometres west of the border with the Sudan's conflict-torn Darfur region. Chad currently hosts over 280,000 refugees and over 170,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), most of whom are in the eastern region, and she was tasked with working for their return. The official's functions consist in providing support and guidance to a team composed of seven United Nations agencies and over 40 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in eastern Chad.

Work at FIFA

In June 2016 she assumed the role of FIFA Secretary General responsible for overseeing commercial and operational side of the organization. She replaced Jerome Valcke who has been implicated in corruption allegations in his role.

Within months of landing the job a controversy erupted in the United Kingdom over the rules forbidding the wearing of poppies by players. Samoura declared on 3 November 2016 that England, Scotland and Wales would be punished if they wore the poppy on Remembrance Day as FIFA classes it as a political symbol. "Britain is not the only country that has been suffering as a result of war", she said. "Syria is an example. My own [African] continent has been torn by war for years. The only question is 'why are we doing exceptions for just one country and not the rest of the world'." UK Prime Minister Theresa May condemned FIFA and told Parliament that Samoura's decision was "utterly outrageous".