Amina Mohammed

 Nigeria’s former Minister of the Environment and current Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed has won the Diplomat of the Year award of Foreign Policy (FP) magazine.

The award was won by Google in 2016 and former United States Secretary of State, John Kerry in 2015. This year, two other women were honoured for their respective roles in global diplomacy.

Becca Heller, the co-founder and director of the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP) won the ‘Citizen Diplomat of the Year’ while Wendy Sherman, a former United States Under Secretary for Political Affairs was named the ‘National Security Diplomat of the Year.’

In her acceptance speech, the 56-year-old Mohammed said she was receiving the accolade on behalf of the UN which she proudly serves, adding that diplomacy was a tool that closes the gap between different countries, bringing about peace, development and respect for human rights.

She said: “As a woman of colour, a Muslim, an African, a mother of six, a grandmother and as the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, I owe it to the world to dig deep and do my part in support of Antonio Guterres to achieve our goals for a  more peaceful world of dignity and hope, managing international relations, building trust and leveraging diplomacy in the most unconventional ways and always speaking truth to power for those whose voices cannot reach these corridors of power.

“Finally, I accept this honour for those women diplomats gone before me as I stand on their shoulders to carry on their unfinished work in our world of pain, desperation and yet we don’t have the luxury of failure.”

The Diplomat of the Year dinner is an annual event organized by Foreign Policy magazine which reviews the accomplishments of leading officials and diplomats worldwide and identifies those who have made the greatest contribution to international relations.