Shashi Tharoor Writer and UN Diplomat

Shri Shashi Tharoor, is a well-known Indian English writer, scholar and international civil servant. He was born in London on March 1956 to father, a newspaper executive and mother a housewife, with their roots in Palakkad, a town in Kerala, India.

Tharoor mostly grew up in India did his schooling and under graduation in cities such as Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi. He completed his honors degree in History from the prestigious St. Stephen's College in Delhi and won a scholarship to Tufts University in Boston. As a student he took part in debates, quiz contests and also tried his hand in theatre. In the mid 1970's, he went to the United States and acquired two master's degrees and a Ph.D. in Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, all by the age of twenty-two.

Tharoor joined the United Nations in May 1978 in the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva and has been with the organisation since then. He became the head of UNHCR Singapore office  (1981-1984) at the peak of the Vietnamese "boat people" crisis. Then he served as Special Assistant to the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations from 1989 to1996 at UN headquarters in New York, towards the end of the term from 1991 to 1996, he led the team responsible for peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia. He served as the Executive Assistant to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (1997-1998) and as the Director of Communications and Special projects in the office of the Secretary-General from 1998 to 2001. In January 2001, he was appointed as interim head of the Department of Public Information (DPI) by Kofi Annan, and after a year and a half was confirmed as the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information of the United Nations. In this capacity, he is responsible for the communication strategy, enhancing the image and effectiveness of the organisation. In 2003, the Secretary-General appointed him United Nations Coordinator for Multilingualism. In 2006, he was the official candidate of India for the succession to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and came second out of seven official candidates in the race. Tharoor served as the UN Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information between June 2002 and February 2007. Dr. Tharoor, in addition to a variety of other activities in his private life, is Chairman of Dubai-based Afras Ventures. He is also the Joint Chairman of UNSICAD (United Nations Simulation International Conference at Abu Dhabi and Dubai), the World Summit to be held in the United Arab Emirates in June 2008.