Ambassador H.M.G.S. Palihakkara

Ambassador (Former) H. M. G. S. Palihakkara is a retired Sri Lankan diplomat and civil servant with a distinguished career spanning nearly four decades in the Sri Lanka Foreign Service. A respected voice on international relations and foreign policy, he brings extensive experience across multilateral diplomacy, peace processes, and regional affairs in Asia. He pursued specialised studies in international human rights and humanitarian law at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute, Lund University, Sweden, complementing his diplomatic training received in Australia following his entry into the Foreign Service in 1979.

Throughout his career, Ambassador Palihakkara held a succession of senior diplomatic postings, including Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva, officer at Sri Lanka’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, and Ambassador to Thailand — with concurrent accreditation to Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam — from 2001 to 2004. He also served as Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). In April 2004, he was appointed Foreign Secretary of Sri Lanka, concurrently serving as Director General of the government’s Peace Secretariat, positions he held until his retirement from the Foreign Service in December
2006.

He subsequently returned to multilateral diplomacy as Sri Lanka’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York from August 2008 to August 2009. In January 2015, he was appointed by President Maithripala Sirisena as Governor of the Northern Province, a position he held until February 2016. As of 2026, Ambassador Palihakkara remains an active commentator on global affairs, drawing on his decades of diplomatic experience to engage with questions of international relations, foreign policy, and regional security.