Jayantha Dhanapala

Jayantha Dhanapala (; 30 December 1938 – 27 May 2023) was a Sri Lankan diplomat who served as member of the Board of Sponsors of The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and was a governing board member of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Dhanapala was also a distinguished member of Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka and he was the Senior Special Advisor on Foreign Relations to President Maithripala Sirisena, and was Sri Lanka's official candidate for the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations, before withdrawing from the race on 29 September 2006. From 2007 he was the president of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.

Early years in Sri Lanka
Dhanapala was born in Sri Lanka on 30 December 1938. His family hails from the town of Matale. Dhanapala was educated at  Trinity College in Kandy. He gained a reputation as an all-rounder as a schoolboy and was awarded the Ryde Gold Medal in 1956. At the age of 17 Jayantha Dhanapala won a contest with an essay titled "The World We Want". On winning this contest he went to a meeting of youth in a New York Herald Tribune Forum which was later to be renamed as World Youth Forum. When he   travelled to the US he met Senator John F. Kennedy and President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Diplomatic career
He entered the Sri Lankan diplomatic service and served in London, Beijing, Washington, D.C., New Delhi and Geneva. Dhanapala was appointed Ambassador in Geneva (1984–87)— he was also accredited to the UN and was appointed Sri Lanka's Ambassador to the United States of America based in Washington D.C. from 1995 to 1997.

Dhanapala was widely acclaimed for his presidency of the 1995 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference, a landmark event in disarmament history, because of his crafting of a package of decisions balancing the twin objectives of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament and the concerns of the nuclear weapon states and the non-nuclear weapon states which was adopted without a vote. The New York Times observed that Jayantha Dhanapala 'was a diplomat mostly unknown outside the arms-control world until he was elected to preside over this conference.'

Under-Secretary-General at the UN
Dhanapala was hand-picked by UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan to take on the challenging job of Under Secretary General to re-establish the Department of Disarmament after the UN reforms of 1997 (1998–2003). During his tenure, he piloted the UN's role in arresting the proliferation of small arms and light weapons, anti-personnel landmines, conventional weapons, and weapons of mass destruction while reinforcing existing norms and norm-building in other areas such as missiles. He also broke new ground both in-house in taking managerial initiatives in gender mainstreaming and in work-life issues, as well as in the disarmament field by innovating the exchange of weapons for a development programme in Albania and other areas, and also in the cross-sectoral linking of disarmament with development, the environment and peace education programmes.

Dhanapala was appointed Secretary-General of the Secretariat for Coordinating the Peace Process (SCOPP) in Sri Lanka from 2004–2005. He was also Senior Special Advisor to both Presidents Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga and Mahinda Rajapakse during the period 2005–2007 and Senior Special Advisor on Foreign Relations to President Maithripala Sirisena, 12 January 2015.

Candidate for the post of UN Secretary-General
Sri Lanka's civil war hobbled Dhanapala's candidacy for United Nations Secretary-General. The opposition parties in Sri Lanka joined hands with the government on the day that his candidacy was announced.Jayapala was one among the seven aspirants for this position in 2006, but he lost out in the early popularity polls among the seven candidates, for multiple reasons. A vital one was that Sri Lanka's populous neighbor India also had a viable candidate in the ring.

Death
Dhanapala died in Kandy on 27 May 2023, at the age of 84.

Honours and awards
Dhanapala was named "the Sri Lankan of the year" by the business magazine LMD in 2006.

 Doctor of Letters honoris causa by the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka (2000)
 Doctor of Humane Letters Honoris causa by the Monterey Institute of International Studies, U.S. (2001)
 Doctor of Science in the Social Sciences by the University of Southampton, UK (2003)
 Doctor of Letters (Honoris causa) by the Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka (2003)
 Doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) from the Dubna International University of Nature, Society and Man in Russia (2009)
 Sean MacBride Prize – From the International Peace Bureau – Awarded in November, (2007)

Bibliography
 Multilateral Diplomacy and the NPT: An Insiders’ Account
Jayantha Dhanapala with R. Rydell, Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2005
 Regional Approaches to Disarmament, Security and Stability
Jayantha Dhanapala (ed.), Geneva: UNIDIR, 1993, published for UNIDIR by Dartmouth (Aldershot)
 The United Nations, Disarmament and Security: Evolution and Prospects Jayantha Dhanapala (ed.), Geneva: UNIDIR, 1991
 China and the Third World Jayantha Dhanapala, New Delhi: Vikas, 1985

References

 Dhanapala quits Cargills Board to take up Senior Presidential Advisor role  January 14, 2015
 Dhanapala quits Cargills Board to take up Senior Presidential Advisor role  January 14, 2015
 Honorary Professor, Biography Professor Jayantha Dhanapala

External links

 
 Jayantha Dhanapala Blog

Speeches
 Challenging 'the Very Existence of WMD'
 Gender Perspectives on Disarmament
 Sri Lanka Peace Process: Problems and Prospects
 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty – EIF Conference Speeches

1938 births
2023 deaths
Sinhalese people
Sri Lankan civil servants
Sri Lankan diplomats
Alumni of the University of Ceylon (Peradeniya)
Permanent Representatives of Sri Lanka to the United Nations
Ambassadors of Sri Lanka to the United States
Ambassadors of Sri Lanka to Switzerland
Under-Secretaries-General of the United Nations
Alumni of Trinity College, Kandy
People from Colombo