Tharit Charungvat

Tharit Charungvat
At a Seminar on Trade Agreements hosted by the American Chamber of Commerce, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2013
Ambassador of Thailand to the Republic of Turkey
In office 2013–2016
Ambassador of Thailand to the Federative Republic of Brazil
In office 2011–2013
Ambassador of Thailand to the Republic of South Africa
In office 2009–2011
Director-General, Department of Information, MFA-Thailand.
In office 2007–2009
Director-General, Department of South Asia, Middle East and African Affairs, MFA-Thailand.
In office 2006–2007
Ambassador Attached to the Ministry, MFA-Thailand.
In office 2004–2006
Consul-General, Royal Thai Consulate-General, Hong Kong.
In office 2003–2004
Personal details
Born	Thailand
Nationality	Thai
Spouse(s)	Vithu Charungvat
Children	Varine Charungvat
Alma mater	The American University Chulalongkorn University

Tharit Charungvat is a former career diplomat from Thailand with more than 30-years experience in the Thai Foreign Service. After his retirement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand in September 2016, he currently is an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand.

Career

Ambassador Tharit Charungvat first joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand in 1980 as an Attaché in the ASEAN Department. After serving as Third and Second Secretary in the Policy and Planning Division of the Ministry, he was posted to the Thai Embassy in Brussels, Belgium from 1990 – 1994 as Second and then First Secretary responsible for Thai-European Community relations. He then returned to Thailand to serve as Counselor in the Department of Information before moving on in 1997 to begin 8 years of close association with China as the Director of Division III of the Department of East Asian Affairs, which oversees Chinese affairs. This was followed by postings in 1999 to the Royal Thai Consulate-General in Kunming, PRC as the Deputy Consul-General, and then to Hong Kong in 2003 as the Consul-General.

He returned to Thailand in 2004 to take up the post of Ambassador-at-Large at the Foreign Ministry, and over the next two years helped to lay a new ground work for the Ministry’s entry into the digital age of information management and connectivity. In 2006, he moved on to serve as the Director-General of the Department of South Asia, Middle East and African Affairs, overseeing Thailand’s bilateral and multilateral relations with more than eighty countries from the African continent though the Middle East to the Indian sub-continent. In 2007 he was appointed as Director-General of the Department of Information and the Official Spokesperson of the Ministry during a sensitive period in Thai-Cambodian relations.^[1]

He would hold this post for two and half years until mid-2009 when he began his Ambassadorship assignment abroad, which would see him posted to three important emerging economies successively until his retirement. He first returned to familiar territory by being appointed Ambassador of Thailand to the Republic of South Africa and accredited to ten additional countries in the Southern African region, namely Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Zaire and Zimbabwe. During his time in South Africa, he worked to promote and expand trade, tourism and people to people ties between Thailand and southern Africa.^[2] Ambassador Charungvat then moved on at the end of 2011 to become Ambassador of Thailand to the Federative Republic of Brazil. Over one and a half years in Brazil, he worked to further enhance trade, business and investment ties between Thailand and Brazil.^[3][4] In late-2013 he was appointed to his final posting as Ambassador of Thailand to the Republic of Turkey and accredited also to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Macedonia and Turkmenistan. During his time in Turkey, which he held until his retirement in September 2016, he helped to promote synergy in security, investment^[5] and tourism cooperation^[6], along with people-to-people relations^[7] between Thailand and Turkey.

Following his retirement, Ambassador Charungvat has been appointed as a member of Royal Thai Government's Committee on the Formation of National Strategies on Enhancement of Competitiveness. He is an Emininent Person on Administration and Management in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Civil Service Sub-Commission and advises the Ministry on Ministry Reform and on the situation in the Southern Provinces of Thailand. He is also the Vice Chairman of the Friends for Friends Foundation.

As Thai Ambassador to South Africa, 2010

Presenting credentials to South African President Jacob Zuma, 1 October 2010

Presenting credentials to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, 23 February 2012

Presenting credentials to President of Turkey Abdullah Gül, 25 December 2013

Chronology

Education and personal life

Ambassador Charungvat earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, and a Master of Arts degree in International Affairs – Asian Study and International Economic Development from The American University in Washington, D.C., U.S.A. He also completed Thailand’s National Defence College curriculum in 2004.

Ambassador Charungvat is married to Mrs. Vithu Charungvat with one child.

Decorations received

See also

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand
• Foreign relations of Thailand
• List of diplomatic missions of Thailand

References

External links

• Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand
• Royal Thai Embassy, Ankara, Turkey