Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury

Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury
Chowdhury in 2007
Minister of Foreign Affairs
In office 2007–2008
Preceded by	Iajuddin Ahmed
Succeeded by	Dipu Moni
Personal details
Born	25 October 1946 Dacca District,[citation needed] British India

Dr Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is a former Bangladeshi Minister of Foreign Affairs (2007-2009), a position he held after a long career in diplomacy and the Civil Service, starting in Pakistan in 1969, thereafter transferring to Bangladesh after the nation gained independence in 1971.

He served as Bangladesh’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York (2001-2007), and in Geneva (1996-2000). He was also Ambassador to Qatar (1994-1996), and accredited to Chile, Peru, and the Holy See (Vatican).

An international civil servant for a brief period, he was Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in 2000.

After four decades of working with the government, he joined the academia as a scholar in 2009. He was Principal Research Fellow (Research- lead in multilateral relations and international linkages) at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) of the National University of Singapore (NUS). He also taught courses at the Nanyang Technological University and at the Lee Kuan Institute of Public policy in Singapore. He joined the corporate world in 2020, assuming the post of Group Senior Advisor to Meinhardt International, a multinational entity headquarters in Singapore.

Education[]

Chowdhury obtained a MA and PhD, both in International Relations, at the Australian National University in Canberra, having stood First in First Class in Political Science Honours at the Dacca University. Earlier he had studied at the prestigious St Gregory’s High School and Notre Dame college in Dhaka, obtaining High First Division in Matriculation and Intermediate of Arts public examinations.

His post-graduate mentors included Professors Hedley Bull, Bruce Miller, Desmond Ball, and Geoffrey Jukes. His interests focused on strategic analysis, arms control and non-proliferation, and war studies, which were to remain with him throughout his later career.

Diplomatic Career[]

In Bangladesh’s pre-independence period, he had stood first in then-East Pakistan in the Superior Civil service examination, and joined the Civil Service of Pakistan (CSP) in 1969. He received his training in the Civil Service Academy in Lahore and began his administrative career as an Assistant Commissioner (probationer) in Abbottabad, in the North- West Frontiers of Pakistan (today’s Khaybar Pakhtunkhwa).

Following Bangladesh’s independence, he was Private Secretary to a cabinet minister General MAG Osmany, who had been the Commander-in-Chief of the Bangladesh Liberation Army during the war of 1971. Thereafter, following a stint in the Planning Commission, he went on study- leave in Australia where he remained till1980, joining the Ministry of Foreign affairs on return.

Chowdhury’s diplomatic career took him to Bonn, Doha, Geneva, and New York. During his longtime postings as Ambassador to the World Trade Organization(WTO) and to the United Nations (UN), he had been Chairman of the WTO Council on Trade Policy Review, WTO Committee on Trade and Development, President of the Conference on Disarmament ,Chairman of the UN Information Committee, Chairman of the UN Second (Economic Committee), Chairman of the Committee for Social Development and Chairman of the UN Information Committee, Chairman of the Population and Development Commission, and Chairman of the Committee on Social Development.

He had been associated with the UN Reforms process as a ‘’facilitator” appointed by the President of the UN General Assembly. He was also responsible for conducting negotiations on the paragraphs on principles of the Responsibility to Protect in the ‘’Outcome Document” on UN Reforms approved by global leaders in 2005.

International Civil Service[]

Upon secondment to the United Nations in 2000, Chowdhury was appointed Special Advisor to the Secretary General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) at its headquarters in Geneva. In that capacity he assisted Secretary General Rubens Ricupero in organizing the Third UN Conference on Least Developed Countries that took place in Brussels that year.

Global Honours[]

Chowdhury’s contributions as a global diplomat were recognized by the New York City Council, when in a Proclamation in 2003, he was named as “one of the world’s leading diplomatic leaders”. He was also awarded a knighthood of the Order of St Gregory the Great by Pope Jon Paul the Second.

Caretaker Government[]

When, following a political crisis in Bangladesh, a Caretaker Government was formed in January 2007, Iftekhar Chowdhury was sworn in as the Foreign Minister (Formal title: Foreign Advisor). He was also put in charge of two additional Ministries, Overseas Employment and Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs. On his watch, Bangladesh succeeded in creating global market for 1.8 million additional employments for Bangladeshi workers abroad.

In November 2008, there was a flare -up with Myanmar in the Bay of Bengal. A cabinet committee, helmed by Chowdhury, took a strong decision to send a naval patrol of four warships, forcing Myanmar to withdraw two of its vessels from disputed waters, ending a four-day stand off that almost brought the two neighbours into a serious armed conflict. He flew to Myanmar shortly thereafter to discuss the row. (Citation: “Myanmar Withdraws Warships””, AFP, 6 Nov, 2008).

He was also instrumental in organizing Bangladesh’s participation at the Davos Conference of the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in 2008. Iftekhar Chowdhury was also part of a group of five members of a “kitchen-cabinet” that was able to successfully negotiate with all the political parties the end of the period of emergency and the holding of elections paving the path to a new government in 2009.

Academic Career[]

Following the change of government in 2009, Chowdhury took to a career in the academia. He joined the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) as the Principal Research Fellow, where he remained till 2020, then becoming an Honorary Fellow. He also taught at the Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), and at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

He has been participating in numerous seminars and workshops in universities and think tanks around the world, and has been contributing articles to journals and newspapers on international relations and global issues. He has authored books on the United Nations and the World Trade Organization, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and a compendium of essays entitled South Asia in the Contemporary World: A Scholar-Diplomat’s Perspective. He has also co-authored a book, Afghanistan: The Next Phase, and Pakistan at Seventy.

Chowdhury is on the Advisory Board of the New York-based Global Center on Cooperative Security. He has been attending the sessions of the Astana Club, a group of eminent global leaders annually hosted by the First President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, and of the Beijing-based World Peace Forum.

Corporate Sector[]

In October 2020, he joined the private sector, when he assumed the post of Senior Group Advisor of Meinhardt International, a multidisciplinary engineering and designing multinational firm headquartered in Singapore.

Personal Life[]

He comes of a very distinguished Bangladeshi family, belonging to the Sylhet region in the north-east of the country with major contributions to public life in Bangladesh. His father, and all his siblings, have been involved with upper reaches of government service, diplomacy, and politics, having served as Permanent Secretaries, Ambassadors and Ministerial appointees. A brother-in-law was one of the highest -level Bangladeshi Army officers to have been killed during the country’s liberation struggle. He and his late wife, Nicole Sherin Chowdhury, have one daughter, Naureen Chowdhury Fink, an alumna of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and King’s College, London, who is the Executive Director of Soufan Center, a New York thinktank specializing on counter-terrorism.