..Press Release................................ UNESCAP News Services

Date 11 January 2007
Press Release No: Bio/02/2007

SECRETARY-GENERAL APPOINTS HAK-FAN LAU AS CHIEF OF UN INFORMATION SERVICES IN BANGKOK

Bangkok (United Nations Information Services) -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has appointed Hak-Fan Lau as Chief of UN Information Services (UNIS) in Bangkok, serving the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) and acting concurrently as Director of UN Information Centre for Cambodia; Lao People’s Democratic Republic; Malaysia; Singapore; Thailand; and Viet Nam. Mr. Lau, who comes to this post with two decades of experience in journalism and public information, will take up his duties on 15 January 2007.

Mr. Lau has worked for the Department of Public Information at UN Headquarters for more than seven years. He is currently Chief of the Chinese Language Unit at UN Radio. In this capacity, he also serves as the editor of the UN News Centre – a web-based newswire service – in Chinese. Mr. Lau joined UN Radio in 1999 as acting Chief of the Asian Unit, overseeing the production of weekly programmes for the region in Bangla, Chinese, English, Hindi, Indonesian and Urdu. He was responsible for the launch in 2000 of a daily broadcast in Chinese, and has overseen a rapid growth in audience number to 128 million, a third of UN Radio’s worldwide total, through a sustained, proactive and multi-prong outreach campaign.

Mr. Lau began his journalistic career with the BBC World Service radio in London in 1987, and had worked there for 12 years prior to joining the UN. He was a Senior Producer in the Chinese language service before moving to the World Service English news and current affairs department in 1995. He undertook a wide range of assignments, including serving as a London-based Asia Reporter for World Service News, editing East Asia Today – BBC’s flagship programme for the region, and being part of the team which launched The World Today, the new flagship current affairs programme on the BBC.

Mr. Lau holds a master’s degree in international political economy and a post-graduate diploma in international relations, both from the London School of Economics and Political Science. He has a first degree in business administration from the City University of Hong Kong, China.

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