Lazima Onta-Bhatta

Deputy Resident Representative

United Nations Development Programme – Tajikistan

Lazima brings more than 23 years of experience in international development. She has worked extensively in the areas of poverty, youth employment, gender equality and women’s empowerment, livelihoods, inclusive governance, community resilience, crisis response, results-based management, and monitoring and evaluation. She has worked as the Deputy Resident Representative in Timor-Leste (2019-2022), in Mongolia (2022-2023) and India (2023). She brings lots of experience of developing programmes and projects, partnership and resource mobilisation, and programme management.

Before assuming the Deputy roles, Lazima worked as the Country Programme Specialist (2018-2019) and Result-based Management Specialist (2016-2018) in UNDP’s Bangkok Regional Hub and supported UNDP Country Offices in the Asia Pacific region through the design and delivery of trainings, programme oversight, coordination, and management support.

Between 2006 and 2016, Lazima worked in the UNDP Country Office in Nepal and assumed three roles: Assistant Country Director heading the Strategic Planning unit, Assistant Resident Representative heading the Poverty and Inclusion portfolio, and Gender and Social Inclusion Specialist supporting in mainstreaming gender in the entire programme and capacity development of project teams. Before joining the Country Office, Lazima was the Project Manager for a UNDP project in 2005-2006, and she worked as the Senior Programme Officer in the Danish International Development Agency’s (DANIDA) advisory team for the school education sector to the Ministry of Education in Nepal from 2002-2005.

Lazima holds a Ph.D  in Anthropology from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, USA. She is from Nepal, is married, and has two daughters.