Tehmina Janjua takes charge as country’s first ever woman foreign secretary

Tehmina Janjua on Monday assumed charge as the new foreign secretary of Pakistan, becoming the first woman in the history of the country to do so, Radio Pakistan reported.

Janjua replaced Aizaz Chaudhry, a career diplomat who has taken up charge as the new ambassador to the United States.

Janjua, the first woman appointed to the Foreign Office’s top post, was long considered a favourite for the position.

Having joined the Foreign Service in 1984, Janjua’s experience has mainly been in multilateral diplomacy. Her only remarkable bilateral posting had been as ambassador to Rome from December 2011 to October 2015. Among her other overseas postings are stints at the UN in New York and Geneva.

Janjua has not served on a major territorial desk at the headquarters, except for a year-long posting at the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe desk at the start of her Foreign Service career.

At the headquarters, she worked as a director at the foreign secretary’s office, director general strategic planning, and briefly as spokesperson in 2011.

Source: Dawn