Maha Kattaa joined the ILO in 2009 following 12 years of professional experience in legal, academic l and governmental fields, including 4 years at the Syrian State Planning Commission and eight years in managing short and long term projects with the EU, UNDP and ILO. She holds a PhD in International law and a Master degree in international Economic relations from University of Loraine in France. She was an associate professor at Aleppo University and at the Higher Institute of Business Administration (HIBA) at Damascus University during the period of 2004-2013. Dr Kattaa, published several papers and articles on employment, social protection and refugees and recently several reports on the impact of COVID-19 on the labour Merket in Arab region. She has been leading the ILO response to the Refugee Crisis in Jordan for the last seven years and helped thousands of refugees to access to formal employment in the country through evidence based policy advocacy, work permit, skills development, job placement, EIIP and entrepreneurship development. Dr. Kattaa is now the Senior Resilience and Crisis Response Specialist for the ILO Regional Office for Arab States supporting mainly Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Syria. She is also ILO’s country coordinator for Iraq responsible for providing policy advice, technical advisory services, programme and project development and leading applied research in the field of employment-rich and decent work driven crisis responses.