Former High Commissioner to Australia made S'pore's next Ambassador to Indonesia

SINGAPORE - The Republic's former high commissioner to Australia, Mr Kwok Fook Seng, 53, will be Singapore's next ambassador to Indonesia from July.

In a statement on Tuesday (June 28), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) said Mr Kwok served in his former position from August 2016 to March 2022.

He joined MFA in 1995 and served in various portfolios related to Asean, Latin America, South Asia, South-east Asia and the United Nations.

He was also Special Assistant to Professor S. Jayakumar in 2001, who was foreign minister at the time.

From 2002 to 2006, Mr Kwok handled cases of international arbitration at the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea and the International Court of Justice.

He was deputy high commissioner at the Singapore High Commission in Kuala Lumpur from 2006 to 2008.

From 2009 to 2010, Mr Kwok was director-general of the Asean-Singapore National Secretariat, overseeing Singapore's participation at all regional forums under Asean.

He was Singapore's Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organisation and the World Intellectual Property Organisation in Geneva from February 2011 to June 2014.

He was also Singapore's Ambassador for Climate Change from July 2014 to July 2016, leading the team that negotiated and concluded the Paris Agreement at the 21st Conference of Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change in Paris in December 2015.

Mr Kwok graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Communications Studies (Honours) from Murdoch University, Western Australia, and a Master of Public Management from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

He was awarded the Public Administration Medal (Bronze) in 2006 and the Public Administration Medal (Silver) in 2008. He was also conferred an Honorary Doctorate of the University by Murdoch University in 2020.