James Barrington with U Thant
James Barrington with U Nu and Dag Hammarskjold
Justice U Myint Thein presenting at UN
Daw Mya Sein in UN
U Nyun at a ECAFE meeting
Colonel Ye Gaung
Burmese in UN Peacekeeping Force
Dr. Thant Myint-U in former Yugoslavia
24 October 1945
Myanmar's long history of service at the UN
room United States
U Thant served at the UN from 1957 to 1971, first as Burma's Permanent Representative (1957-61), then as Secretary-General (1961-71).
The many other Burmese who have served at the UN over the years include:
- U So Nyun, ICS, Burma's first representative in 1949 (photo 1);
- James Barrington, Permanent Secretary at the Burma Foreign Office and Permanent Representative to the UN in the 1950s (photo 2 with U Thant and photo 3 with U Nu and Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold);
- Justice U Myint Thein, who represented Burma at the debate on Chinese Nationalist troops in Burma in 1953 (photo 4);
- Daw Mya Sein, educator and member of the Burmese delegation to the General Assembly in 1960 (photo 5);
- U Nyun, ICS, Executive Secretary of ECAFE in the 1960s and 1970s (photo 6).
Burma (now Myanmar) also provided troops to UN peacekeeping in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in Lebanon and the Congo. Photos 7 and 8 are of Colonel Ye Gaung who was part of the UN peacekeeping force in the Congo in 1960, as Chief of Staff of the UN's Eastern Command, and other Burmese peacekeepers in the Congo.
U Thant House chairman Dr Thant Myint-U served for over 12 years at the United Nations: in peacekeeping operations in Cambodia (1992-3) and the former Yugoslavia (1994-6), and at the UN Secretariat in NY (2000-2007), including as Director of Policy Planning in the Department of Political Affairs. Photo 9 is Dr Thant Myint-U speaking to media in the former Yugoslavia 1994.