UNITAR New York Office

Home

UNITAR Roundtables

Speaker: H.E. Haron Amin

Ambassador of Afghanistan to Japan

Non-resident Ambassador to the Kingdom of Thailand and the Republic of the Philippines

"The Search for Human Capacity and Human Security in post-conflict Afghanistan"

Date: 17 November 2006

Ambassador Haron Amin was born in Kabul, Afghanistan. His family fled his homeland one year after the Soviet invasion of 1979 to settle in the United States. He returned to Afghanistan in 1988 to fight for his country's freedom under his mentor, Commander Massoud. In 1990, he was assigned to represent Afghan interests before the U.S. Government. He returned to Afghanistan in 1995, working again under Massoud while joining the Foreign Service as the Deputy Foreign Minister's chief of staff until the fall of Kabul in September 1996. In 1997 he was assigned chief of staff in the Office of the Foreign Minister and later that of the Prime Minister. In 1998, he worked in various capacities at the Permanent Mission of Afghanistan to the UN. In June 2002, he became Deputy Chief of Mission and in July 2003 was appointed as Chargé d'Affaires of the Afghan Embassy in Washington, DC. He has a Master of Arts in Political Science and also a Certificate of International Law from St. John's University, New York. In April 2004, he became the first Afghan Ambassador to Japan since the Communist regime in 1978.

Roundtable Topic

At present in Afghanistan human security is one of the most important challenges for reconstruction. One of the means by which it can be improved is through capacity building in general, and within the public sector in particular. In spite of the wide-ranging efforts of the Afghan government, in cooperation with the international community, towards this end, many significant challenges still remain.

2003-07 United Nations Institute for Training and Research. All Rights Reserved.