Ambassador Bolat Nurgaliyev

Ambassador Bolat Nurgaliyev was born in 1951 in the Akmola region of Kazakhstan.

He joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR in 1980.

After two diplomatic postings in Soviet embassies in South Asia, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (1981-1985) and the Republic of India (1990-1992), in 1992 he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the newly independent Republic of Kazakhstan, where he held the posts of Director of International Security and Arms Control Department and later Deputy Foreign Minister.

He served as Ambassador of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United States of America (1996-2000), the Republic of Korea (2001-2003), Japan (2004-2006), and the State of Israel (2012-2014). From 2007 to 2009 he was the Secretary General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, headquartered in Beijing, the People’s Republic of China. During Kazakhstan’s 2010 Chairmanship of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, he served as Special Representative of the Chair-in-Office for Protracted Conflicts.

Having retired from Kazakhstan’s foreign service in 2014, from 2015 to 2018 he held the post of Adviser to the President of the National Railways Company of Kazakhstan. Since December 2019 Ambassador Nurgaliyev was the Deputy Chair of the Board and in April 2021 was appointed the Chairman of the Board of the Foreign Policy Research Institute under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Kazakhstan.

Ambassador Nurgaliyev is married, his spouse is Alma Nurgaliyeva, they have daughter Almagul and son Yerden. He was rewarded the order “Qurmet” (2010) and the order “Dostyk” (2020) and medals. Holds the diplomatic rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary since 1996.