Ambassador Umej Bhatia is Singapore’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office in Geneva and the United Nations Office in Vienna, resident in Geneva. Ambassador Bhatia is concurrently Resident Representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency and Permanent Representative to the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organization.
Ambassador Bhatia graduated with Double First Class Honours from the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom in 1995 under a Singapore Broadcasting Corporation scholarship. He obtained a Master of Arts from Harvard University, United States of America in 2005 under a Ministry of Foreign Affairs scholarship.
In 1995, Ambassador Bhatia worked for the then Television Corporation of Singapore where he produced and presented the current affairs programme “Talking Point”.
Ambassador Bhatia joined the Foreign Service in 1996 and has served in various capacities on issues covering Southeast Asia, Middle East and the United Nations in the Ministry’s headquarters. He served overseas as First Secretary in Singapore’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, from 1999 to 2003, and as an Alternate Representative for Singapore on the United Nations Security Council from 2001 to 2002. In 2006, he was appointed as the first Chargé d’Affaires in the Singapore Embassy in Doha, Qatar where he served until 2011. He was Singapore’s Consul-General in Dubai from September 2011 to December 2012. Ambassador Bhatia was Singapore’s first resident Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates from January 2013 to December 2016. He served as Director-General Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia from January 2017 to May 2019.
Ambassador Bhatia was awarded the Public Administration Medal (Bronze) by the Singapore Government in 2008. From 2009 to 2012, Ambassador Bhatia served on the board of Singapore’s Infocomms Development Authority (International). In 2016, Ambassador Bhatia was conferred the Order of Independence (First Class) by the President of the United Arab Emirates Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.
Ambassador Bhatia is married to Madam Shireen Khushi and they have two teenaged children. He has an interest on topics of historical memory, and has written and published on these issues in his personal capacity.
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August 2019
