Ambassador Libran N. Cabactulan was the 18th Ambassador and Permanent Representative of the Philippines to the United Nations in New York (2010-2015), appointed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo following his role as Ambassador for Disarmament and Nuclear Non-Proliferation in 2010. He was Chairman of the 58th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in 2014, President of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in 2010, Group of 77 Chief Negotiator from 2006 to 2007, and General Assembly facilitator for a UN resolution in 1999 that paved the way for the Monterey Summit in Mexico on Financing for Development (FFD). A career ambassador, his roles included: economic officer (1976-1979) in Geneva, Switzerland; Third Secretary (1986-1989), Minister Counselor (1995-2000), and Ambassador (2010-2015) at the Philippine Mission to the United Nations in New York; Second Secretary (1990-1993) in Brussels, Belgium; Consul General (2000-2002) in Sydney, Australia; and Ambassador (2003-2008) to the United Arab Emirates. At the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), he served as Special Assistant to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Among his duties were: supervision of the DFA’s Management Information System (MIS) and Code, Radio, and Telecommunications (CORATEL); Director for Planning of the Office of Fiscal and Management Services (OFMS), Executive Director of the Office for United Nations and Other International Organizations (UNIO), and Executive Director of the Office of Consular Affairs (OCA). Prior to his third posting to New York, he was appointed by the Secretary of Foreign Affairs as Senior Special Assistant on disarmament and nuclear non-proliferation, with the rank of Assistant Secretary. He was a member of the team that negotiated the Philippine accession to the GATT (now WTO) and the delegation that participated in the Tokyo Round of GATT Multilateral Trade Negotiations in Geneva, Switzerland. He received a presidential citation for his role in the repatriation of Filipinos from Lebanon during the Lebanon-Israeli crisis in 2006 and was conferred the Order of Sikatuna with the rank of Datu (the highest Philippine decoration for exemplary achievements in foreign affairs and international relations) after his successful presidency of the 2010 NPT Review Conference. More recently, he was invited as an expert in: the Regional Dialogue and Consultation on Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (March 2017) in Jakarta, Indonesia, jointly organized by the governments of Indonesia and the Netherlands; the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN) Southeast Asia Regional Meeting 2017 in The Peninsula Manila; Bridging the Gap: Harmonizing the NPT and the Nuclear Ban Treaty (2018) jointly organized by APLN, European Leadership Network (ELN), Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), and TODA Peace Foundation in Seoul, Republic of Korea. In May 2021, he was principal speaker at the webinar on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons organized by the DFA with the support of Miriam College, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
Ambassador Libran N. Cabactulan with United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the opening of the 2010 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), addressing the conference. Photo credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe
He is a special lecturer at the College of International Relations (CIR), Lyceum of the Philippines University, and also teaches at the Claro M. Recto Academy of Advanced Studies (Graduate School). He has lectured on various subjects including International Political Economy, International Organizations, International Law, International Trade Practices and Negotiations (GATT/WTO), International Trade, Philippine Foreign Policy, Issues and Trends in International Relations, Social and Political Thoughts, and Digital Diplomacy. He is a Senior Foreign Affairs Adviser (SFAA) of the DFA. He holds a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in Political Science (cognates, Philosophy) from the University of the Philippines, Diliman, and a certificate in Development Economics from the same. He also holds a Philippine Development Corporation of the Philippines (PDCP) certificate on project evaluation and a diploma with merit on Commercial Policy from the General Agreements on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in Geneva, Switzerland. As His Excellency at the United Nations, he has written over 200 speeches ranging from peacekeeping operations, disarmament, promotion and protection of children, and human rights, to science and technology for development. A lifelong technologist first working with mainframe computers, he supervised and developed the database design for the DFA’s employees and passport records. He has written encryption software in assembly language, later transitioning it to modern technologies. He is married to Remedios Fe Feriera, and they have two children, Dante Sariel and Rina Churee.