Speaker – Ambassador Burhan Gafoor
Ambassador Burhan Gafoor
Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations
Biography
Ambassador Burhan Gafoor has been the Permanent Representative of Singapore to the United Nations in New York since August 2016. A career diplomat who joined the Singapore Foreign Service in 1988, Ambassador Gafoor has held a wide range of senior appointments in both bilateral and multilateral settings. He was Singapore’s High Commissioner to Australia from 2014 to 2016, and Ambassador and Chief Negotiator for Climate Change Negotiations from 2010 to 2014. From 2007 to 2010, he served as Singapore’s Ambassador to France with concurrent accreditation as Ambassador to Portugal, and earlier as Permanent Representative to the United Nations in Geneva from 2004 to 2007, with concurrent accreditation as Ambassador to Turkey. From 2002 to 2004, he was Press Secretary to then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong.
At the United Nations, Ambassador Gafoor has assumed several key leadership roles. He was the Chair of the United Nations Open-Ended Working Group on the security of and in the use of information and communications technologies (OEWG on Cybersecurity, 2021–2025). He previously served as President of the Thirtieth Meeting of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (2020–2021), Vice-President of the 74th (2019–2020) and 78th (2023–2024) Sessions of the United Nations General Assembly, and Chair of the Sixth Committee (Legal) during the 72nd Session (2017–2018).