Dr Khalilur Rahman

Profile

Dr Khalilur Rahman is Bangladesh's Minister of Foreign Affairs and President of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly. He became Foreign Minister under the technocrat quota on 17 February 2026; he is not a member of parliament. He was elected President of the General Assembly on 2 June 2026 and took office on 8 September. He is the second Bangladeshi to hold this post, after Humayun Rasheed Choudhury in 1986-87.

He was born on 1 April 1954 in Nawabganj upazila, Dhaka. After completing his higher secondary education at Dhaka Residential Model College, he obtained a master's degree in economics from the University of Dhaka, coming first in the first class. He also came first in the 1977 BCS examination. He later obtained a master's degree in law and diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the United States and a PhD in economics from the Kennedy School at Harvard University.

Joining the civil service in 1979, he worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as private secretary to the Foreign Minister. While at Bangladesh's Permanent Mission to the United Nations, he represented Bangladesh on the General Assembly's Economic and Financial Committee and was spokesperson for the least developed countries. He then served as head of the New York office of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and as a special adviser in Geneva, and was responsible for economic, social and development matters in the Executive Office of the UN Secretary-General. He played a part in drawing up the programme for the least developed countries at the 2001 Brussels conference, which included provisions for duty-free and quota-free market access for their goods. In 2012 he became head of the policy development and coordination branch of the Office of the UN High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States.

In 2001 he was for a short time private secretary to Justice Latifur Rahman, Chief Adviser of the caretaker government. After the July mass uprising, on 19 November 2024 he was appointed the Chief Adviser's High Representative on the Rohingya crisis and priority issues, and from April 2025 he also served as National Security Adviser. He is one of the founders of East West University and a member of its board of trustees.

Translated from Bangla. Read the original

Sources: Wikipedia (Bangla), Wikipedia (English); the list of responsibilities is the Cabinet Division’s. Checked up to 16 September 2026. If you see a mistake, let us know.