Geneva is home to the multilateral trading system. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) sat there, and so does its successor, the World Trade Organization, created in 1995 after the Uruguay Round (1986–1994). Several UN bodies dealing with trade, development, human rights and disarmament are also based in the city.
According to the UN's 2009 biographical note, he worked in Geneva three times. From 1981 to 1984 he was India's First Secretary handling GATT. From 1988 to 1991 he was seconded to the UN, where he coordinated a UNDP/UNCTAD project that supported developing countries in the Uruguay Round negotiations. From 2002 to 2005 he was India's Permanent Representative.
New York: the Security Council years
India was elected to a non-permanent seat on the Security Council for 2011–2012. As Permanent Representative, he led India's delegation for that term. Under the Council's rules the presidency rotates monthly in English alphabetical order of member states. India held it in August 2011 and November 2012.
He also chaired the Counter-Terrorism Committee. The Council set it up under resolution 1373 (2001) to monitor how member states implement their counter-terrorism obligations.
The Council's resolutions and statements from this period are collective decisions of its fifteen members. His later account of the Council's decisions on Libya, Syria and other crises appears in Perilous Interventions (2016). That book is his own analysis, not an official Indian or UN record.
After government: the multilateralism commission
After retiring he worked at the International Peace Institute, an independent think tank in New York, as Senior Adviser and then Vice-President. He was Secretary General of the Independent Commission on Multilateralism, an IPI initiative that reviewed how the multilateral system works.