Appointed: Othman has served as the ambassador to the Czech Republic, he was Malaysia’s permanent representative to the United Nations and Malaysia’s ambassador to the United States.
LANGKAWI: Former Human Rights Commission (Suhakam) chairman and former senior diplomat Tan Sri Othman Hashim has been appointed as special envoy of the Asean Chair on Myanmar.
Announcing this, Foreign Minister Datuk Seri Mohamad Hasan said Othman’s appointment as the special envoy received consensus during the closed-door Asean Foreign Ministers’ Retreat here yesterday.
“Asean foreign ministers support Othman as the special envoy for Myanmar and in fulfilling his mandate,” he told a press conference yesterday.
Othman, who is a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) graduate of Universiti Malaya, served the Foreign Ministry for more than three decades, holding various posts in the ministry as well as in diplomatic missions abroad.
He is the fifth special envoy on Myanmar to be appointed since the February 2021 military coup that sparked a political and humanitarian crisis in that country.
Othman served as the ambassador to the Czech Republic from 2002 to 2005, and was Malaysia’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, from 2009 to 2012.
He was subsequently posted to Washington DC as ambassador to the United States in 2012, a position he held for a year.
In September 2013, he returned to Putrajaya and was appointed as the ministry’s secretary-general, the highest executive post in the ministry.
He led the ministry during Malaysia’s chairmanship of Asean in 2015 and non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council from 2015 to 2016.
Othman retired in 2016.
