Syed Akbaruddin

Syed Akbaruddin is an Indian Foreign Service officer serving as India's permanent representative at the United Nations since January 2016.

Syed Akbaruddin is an alumnus of The Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet. He is the son of S Bashiruddin, formerly the head of the department of Journalism and Communication at Osmania University, who headed the department for many years and served as Indian ambassador to Qatar, vice chancellor of Dr B R Ambedkar Open University and director of the research wing of the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, and Dr Zeba Bashiruddin, who was a member of the English department at Sri Sathya Sai University.

Akbaruddin is a 1986 batch civil servant. At the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, he was on deputation for four years and returned to India in 2011. He is considered an expert on the West Asia issues in India and has served in various capacities in that region including consul-general at Jeddah from 2000 to 2004. He was the director at the Foreign Secretary's Office of the Ministry from 2004 to 2005.

Akbaruddin was the official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs of India from January 2012 to April 2015 and was succeeded by Vikas Swarup. He headed the External Publicity and Public Diplomacy division of the Ministry of External Affairs in the capacity of Joint Secretary to Government of India. He was also the chief coordinator for the India-Africa Summit in October 2015. He was later Additional Secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs (India) from April 2015 to September 2015. In November 2015, Akbaruddin was appointed as India's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York, succeeding Asoke Kumar Mukerji.

On 16th of August 2019, the United Nations security council held a meeting with regards to the situation of Jammu and Kashmir after the dilution of articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution on the request of Pakistan and China. Syed Akbaruddin played a key role on the 16th of August, 2019 a day after India's Independence Day, as the Indian Ambassador to the United Nations. He gave befitting replies to the journalists including people from Pakistan and attracted a lot of appreciation from the Indian Community. He strictly maintained that the steps taken by the Indian Government were completely an internal matter to India. He also proudly said that India is a democratic nation and will always remain to be. In a remarkable exchange between Akbaruddin and a Pakistani journalist, Akbaruddin said "Stop terror to start talks!" when asked when would India start talks with Pakistan. He also did not hesitate in going and having a handshake with 3 Pakistani journalists as a sign of readiness to have a dialogue in case Pakistan was ready to stop its terror campaign in India. While answering to a question on Indian army violating human rights in Kashmir, he answered “No inter governmental organization in the world has ever said anything about Indian democracy, Indian commitment to human rights, we are the the country who started issues of apartheid at the UN. None of you who are talking about this are even worried about that. Don’t forget, India was the country which changed the human rights declaration all men are born free and equal to all humans are born free and equal signifying men and women are equal...”. In fact, this change in human rights declaration was due to Padma Bhushan Hansa Jivraj Mehta, who was then an Indian delegate to UN Human rights commission in 1947-1948.