Fatou Jah is Chief of the Peace, Recovery and Solutions Division at the International Organization for Migration (IOM), where she oversees the organization's global portfolio on peace, recovery, and stabilization. With over a decade of experience spanning humanitarian response, post-conflict recovery, governance strengthening, and displacement solutions, she has held roles across Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, and Asia-Pacific.
Prior to her current role, Fatou served as Senior Regional Emergency and Post-Crisis Specialist for IOM's Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, providing strategic oversight and technical guidance to more than 40 country offices responding to complex emergencies, disaster displacement, and protracted crises. In this capacity, she led institutional quality assurance for crisis programming, oversaw rapid response deployments, and supported missions transitioning from humanitarian response to recovery and stabilization. Her regional portfolio included major crisis responses in Myanmar, Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippines, as well as cross-border displacement dynamics across South and Southeast Asia.
Her operational experience also spans Haiti, The Gambia, Iraq, and Ethiopia, where she has supported governments and UN Country Teams in designing and implementing recovery, (re)integration, and stabilization approaches in complex displacement settings. Throughout her career, she has held positions within international and local NGOs as well as UN agencies including OCHA, UNICEF, and IOM, working at the intersection of humanitarian response, peacebuilding, recovery, and development to address the drivers of fragility and reduce protracted displacement. Her work consistently bridges humanitarian response with longer-term peace and recovery pathways. This includes supporting efforts to advance displacement solutions in post crisis scenarios including in Iraq, Ethiopia, Philippines, and Papua New Guinea. In Ethiopia, she supported the Somali Regional Government in developing and operationalizing a Durable Solutions Strategy for internally displaced persons, strengthening government-led approaches to recovery and reintegration. In Iraq, she designed and provided technical oversight to national returns and relocation operations supporting the government efforts to advance durable solutions to displacement. She has led over 150 community-based stabilization and governance initiatives in post-conflict settings, institutionalized community-based planning approaches, designed conflict early warning systems linking local monitoring to government response mechanisms, and developed (re)integration frameworks and operational approaches to support stabilization efforts. Beyond operations, Fatou has engaged extensively in UN system coordination and policy development. She has co-chaired regional advocacy platforms, contributed to national migration and displacement policy processes, and integrated solutions frameworks into UN country team efforts including secondment to Resident Coordinator Office. Earlier in her career, she worked with UNICEF in The Gambia on transitional justice, child protection, and national migration policy reform.
Prior to joining the UN system, she worked with the BBC on current affairs programming and with the Hudson Institute's Center for Political and Military Affairs in Washington, DC, conducting research on Middle East and Central Asia policy issues.
Fatou holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of British Columbia and a Master of Arts in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response from the University of Manchester. She brings a strategic and field-informed perspective on how peace, recovery, and solutions programming can support nationally owned pathways out of crisis and toward sustainable stability.
