Senior diplomat Ruchira Kamboj, who took office as India’s new permanent representative to the UN on Tuesday and handed her credentials to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, is the country’s first female UN envoy. She stated in a tweet that it was an honour to be the first Indian woman to hold this post. She also placed a message for the girls : “To the girls out there, we can all make it!”
Kamboj, an Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officer from the 1987 batch, had been representing India in Bhutan. She takes up T S Tirumurti’s position as India’s UN ambassador. She is also the nation’s first female envoy working at the global organization’s New York headquarters.
Kamboj was both the top female candidate in all of India for the 1987 Civil Services batch and the top candidate for the foreign service batch.
At Paris, where she served in the Indian Embassy to France from 1989 to 1991, she started her career in diplomacy. Kamboj, however, eventually went back to Delhi, where she worked as an undersecretary in the ministry of external affairs’ Europe West Division from 1991 to 1996.
She worked at the Indian High Commission in Port Louis, Mauritius, as First Secretary (Economic and Commercial) and Head of Chancery from 1996 to 1999.
From July 2017 to March 2019, Kamboj served as the high commissioner of India to South Africa and was also accredited to the Kingdom of Lesotho. On May 17, 2019, she took responsibility as the Indian envoy to Bhutan.
