Since February 24, 2010, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed, a career diplomat, has served as the ambassador to the United States from the Maldives (population 315,000), an extremely low-lying island chain in the Indian Ocean threatened with extinction by rising sea levels caused by global warming. Ghafoor also represents his country at the United Nations and in Canada. 

 

Born in Malé, Maldives, on November 20, 1959, Ghafoor earned a B.A. from the University of Tasmania in Australia in 1984, and an M.A. in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts in 1988. 

 

A career member of the Maldives Foreign Service, Ghafoor’s early assignments in Maldives included service as a program officer from 1983 to 1985, an assistant undersecretary in the Foreign Ministry from 1985 to 1989, an Assistant Director of Political Affairs from 1989 to 1992, as Deputy Director of Foreign Relations from 1992 to 1994, and Director of Foreign Relations from 1994 to 1997. 

 

Ghafoor’s first overseas assignment came in 1997, when he was appointed Director of Maldives’ mission at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Secretariat in Kathmandu, Nepal, where he served from 1997 to 2000. Returning to Maldives in 2000, Ghafoor served until 2003 as Director General of Foreign Relations at the Foreign Ministry. In 2003, Ghafoor was appointed Counselor at the High Commission of Maldives in Sri Lanka, and was promoted to Deputy High Commissioner there in 2005, remaining until 2006, when he was named Deputy High Commissioner to Malaysia, where he remained until the end of 2007. Concurrently, from 2005 to December 2007, Ghafoor held positions at the Ministry, first as Assistant Executive Director in 2005 and 2006, and then as Executive Director in 2007. 

 

In December 2007, Ghafoor was appointed Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland. He held this position until January 2009, serving concurrently as Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization from September 2008. From January 2009 until his appointment to Washington, DC, Ghafoor served as Ambassador-at-Large in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, seconded to the Office of the President. Over the years, Ghafoor has served as a Member of the Maldives delegation to the United Nations General Assembly Sessions in New York in 1990, 1991, 1992, 2001 and 2002. 

 

Ghafoor is married and has two children, a son and a daughter.

-Matt Bewig

 

Curriculum Vitae (pdf)

Statement at the First Meeting of Friends of Climate Change and its Implications for the Full Enjoyment of Human Rights (pdf)

Meet the Ambassador: Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed of the Maldives (by Mirva Lempiainen, The Interdependent)