Khalilur Rahman of Bangladesh Elected President of the UN General Assembly's 81st Session

Bangladesh's Foreign Minister Khalilur Rahman has been elected President of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) for its 81st session. He won a secret-ballot vote held on 2 June 2026, defeating Andreas Kakouris of Cyprus by 99 votes to 91. A total of 190 ballots were cast, with no invalid votes and no abstentions. Rahman will take charge of the post for a one-year term beginning on 8 September 2026.

The presidency of the UN General Assembly is not permanent. It rotates each year among the UN's five regional groups so that every region gets a turn. The 81st session was the turn of the Asia-Pacific group, which is why a candidate from that region was chosen. It is important to remember that the President of the General Assembly is a different post from the UN Secretary-General. The President presides over the Assembly's debates and sessions for one year, while the Secretary-General is the chief administrative officer of the entire United Nations and serves a longer, five-year term.

Rahman's term will overlap with an important moment for the world body: the process of choosing a successor to the current Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, whose term ends on 31 December 2026.

Who is Khalilur Rahman? Aged 72, he is a career diplomat with more than four decades of experience in diplomacy and multilateral affairs. He became Bangladesh's Foreign Minister in February 2026. Before that, he served as National Security Adviser and as High Representative on the Rohingya Issue in Bangladesh's interim government.

Rahman joined Bangladesh's diplomatic service in 1979 after topping the country's civil service examination, and in the same year he stood first in his Master's examination in Economics at the University of Dhaka. He went on to study at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, earning a Master's in Law and Diplomacy and a PhD in Economics. Over the years he held senior positions at the United Nations in New York and Geneva, including at the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and contributed to several major UN reports.

India welcomed the election. External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar congratulated Rahman and said he looked forward to working closely with him to strengthen multilateral cooperation. India's Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Harish Parvathaneni, also offered his congratulations and reaffirmed India's support for multilateralism centred on the United Nations.