Victor Karunan

Victor Karunan has worked over 16 years with UNICEF, as Regional Advisor on Participation and Partnerships at UNICEF Regional Office in Bangkok; Chief of Adolescent Development and Participation in UNICEF Headquarters in New York; and as Deputy Representative and Senior Social Policy Specialist in UNICEF Malaysia.
He has over 35 years of professional experience in over 40 countries in both the Global North and South - with special focus on South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. His fields of specialisation include: child rights, child participation, adolescent development, social policy, participatory research, and public finance.
Victor led UNICEF’s work on child participation at the UN Special Session on Children at the UN Headquarters in New York in 2002 and the UN Heads of State Climate Summit in 2004. He has worked as a Development Evaluation Consultant for European donor agencies and has conducted research, evaluations and training programmes among community organizations and NGOs in over 15 countries in South and Southeast Asia. He holds a M.A. in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and a Ph.D. in the Social Sciences from the University of Nijmegen, The Netherlands.