Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury is a former Bangladesh Advisor (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.
Chowdhury obtained an MA and Ph.D., both in International Relations, at the Australian National University in Canberra,[1] having stood First in First Class in Political Science Honours at the University of Dhaka. 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.
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.[2] 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 till 1980, 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,[1] WTO Committee on Trade and Development, president of the Conference on Disarmament, 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.
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.[3] 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. He was appointed the chairman of the UN Second (Economic Committee) in 2003.[3] 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.
When, following a political crisis in Bangladesh, a caretaker government was formed in January 2007, Iftekhar Chowdhury was sworn in as the foreign minister in the Fakhruddin Ahmed cabinet.[1] He was also put in charge of two additional ministries, Overseas Employment and Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs.[4]
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.[5] He flew to Myanmar shortly thereafter to discuss the row.[6][7]
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.
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)[8] 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.
Chowdhury is on the advisory board of the New York-based Global Center on Cooperative Security.[9] He has been attending the sessions of the Astana Club, a group of eminent global leaders annually hosted by President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, and of the Beijing-based World Peace Forum.
Chowdhury 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.
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.[10][11] He is a member of the Association of Former BCS (FA) Ambassadors.[12]
In June 2023 he was appointed to the Advisory Board of the Malta based International Institute for Justice and rule of Law (IIJ), founded with the help of the United Nations and the European Union.
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 John Paul the Second.
Chowdhury 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. His eldest brother Faruq Ahmed Choudhury was a foreign secretary, second brother Enam Ahmed Choudhury was secretary, and another one is former ambassador Masum Ahmed Choudhury.[13] A brother-in-law (freedom fighter Col Syed Abdul Hai) was one of the highest level Bangladeshi Army officers to have been killed during the Bangladesh Liberation War.[13]. His youngest sister, Neena Ahmed, married Fakhruddin Ahmed, retired Governor Bangladesh Bank and former Chief Advisor to the 2007-08 caretaker government. 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 the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism, a US based internationally renowned think tank.