Muhammad Haroon Shaukat

Ambassador Muhammad Haroon Shaukat (Retd) has nearly four decades of rich and diverse experience as a career diplomat. He served with distinction in key leadership and management positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Islamabad, and in several Pakistan Diplomatic Missions abroad.  He served as the Ambassador of Pakistan to Turkey, with concurrent accreditation to Macedonia and Kosovo. In recognition of his services rendered to strengthening Pakistan-Turkey relations, the Turkish Foreign Minister conferred upon him the prestigious “Distinguished Services Award” on 26 December 2014 — a first for any Pakistani Ambassador to Turkey. He was also the Ambassador of Pakistan to Brazil with non-resident accreditation to Bolivia, Colombia, Paraguay, and Suriname. Earlier, he served as the Consul General of Pakistan to New York.

His other diplomatic assignments included Saudi Arabia, France, and Niger. He was the Special Secretary in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Islamabad. Various positions he held during the course of his career in the Foreign Office included: Additional Foreign Secretary (Afghanistan and ECO); DG (UN); DG (South Asia) and Director (UN). He has enjoyed a lengthy association with the work of the United Nations; serving as one of the representatives of Pakistan to the UN Security Council (1993-94), Member of Pakistani delegations to a number of sessions of the UN General Assembly and several meetings of other international fora including UNESCO, Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), and the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO).

As UN international staff, he acquired a rewarding experience in one of the most successful UN Peacekeeping Operations, UNAMSIL (Sierra Leone) as Special Assistant to the Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General.

Following his diplomatic career, he was with the Punjab Board of Investment and Trade (PBIT) Lahore, for nearly five years. As acting CEO of PBIT, he was the focal person for an International Seminar on Business Opportunities in Punjab, organised by the Government of the Punjab in November 2015 that hosted over 400 foreign guests from around 15 countries. He was awarded a Certificate of Appreciation by the Chief Minister of the Punjab.

Since September 2022, he has been serving, with great pride and dedication as a Director at the prestigious Centre for Aerospace and Security Studies (CASS), Lahore. In this capacity, he was, among others, the OPI for seminars involving important foreign policy issues, wrote research papers, and published around two dozen op-eds in leading dailies of Pakistan, besides mentoring and supervising a number of researchers for their research projects. He has also contributed periodic reports covering the full spectrum of Pakistan’s foreign relations and regional and international developments, having implications for Pakistan.