Thomas Gass

Thomas Gass is a Swiss diplomat who currently serves as Head of the South Cooperation Department of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

Until the end of December 2017, Gass served as the United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Policy Coordination and Inter-Agency Affairs in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). Previous appointments included Ambassador and Head of Mission of Switzerland to Nepal (2009-2013), as well as a wide-range of experiences in bilateral and multilateral development cooperation.^[1]

Education

Gass holds a PhD in natural sciences and an MSc in engineering diploma in agricultural sciences, both from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). He prepared his Baccalaureate in Mathematics and Physics at the Externat Notre Dame in Grenoble, France.

Career

Early in his career, Gass served as Policy and Programme Officer for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, as Deputy Resident Representative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) in Guyana, and as Regional Director for Europe with the International Plant Genetic Resources Institute in Rome.

From 2004 to 2009, Gass served as Head of the Economic and Development Section at the Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the UN in New York, where he represented Switzerland’s interests, in particular in the Economic and Social Council (United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), its subsidiary Commissions, the General Assembly and the Executive Boards of the major UN Funds and Programmes. During this time, he chaired the Donor Group of the UN Global Compact. In 2006, he served as Vice-President of the Western European and Others Group of the Commission on Population and Development and in 2008 he was appointed the Vice-President of the Executive Board of UNDP/UNFPA.^[2] In 2007, he successfully facilitated a United Nations resolution on the quadrennial comprehensive policy review (QCPR), the periodic review of the General Assembly operational system for development.

From 2009 to 2013, Gass served as Head of the Mission of Switzerland to Nepal (Ambassador and Country Director of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation), where he established the Embassy of Switzerland in Nepal, and ensured the delivery of a development cooperation programme of up to 33 million dollars a year. He also chaired the Donors of the Nepal Peace Trust Fund, the main instrument for international support to Nepal’s peace process.