Victor Karunan has worked 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 was the Regional Development Advisor for Save the Children-UK at the Regional Office for Southeast Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok. He has over 35 years of professional experience in over 40 countries in both the industrialized and developing countries, with special focus on South and Southeast Asia and the Pacific. His work relates to supporting governments, United Nations agencies, international development organisations, NGOs and civil society and private/corporate sector in Human Rights programming, Results-based Management, Social Policy, Public Finance, Adolescent Participation and Development, Policy Advocacy, Participatory Research, Training and Capacity Development. 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 is a founding member of the Focal on the Global South – a policy research programme of the Chulalongkorn University Social Research Institute in Bangkok and is currently Senior Visiting Lecturer in the M.A. and Ph.D programmes in International Development Studies at Chulalongkorn University and in Human Rights, Democratization and Peace Studies at Mahidol University in Bangkok. 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 in the Netherlands. He has taught Child Development, Human Rights and Development Studies at the Asian Social Institute in Manila, the Philippines, the Institute of Social Studies, The Netherlands, SIPA-Colombia University and New York City University Brooklyn College, and Nottingham University and HELP University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
