Thirty-sixth session of ECLAC

Carlos Raúl Morales Moscoso is a Guatemalan lawyer and diplomat and has been the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala since 2014.

He began his diplomatic career in 1989 as Second Secretary in the Office for United Nations Affairs of the Multilateral Policy Department. He was promoted in 1991 to head the Office of Belize and Honduras Affairs at the Integration Department. His first posting in the foreign service came in 1993, when he was appointed First Secretary and Consul at the Guatemalan Embassy in Belize. Ambassador Morales returned to Guatemala in 2000 to take up the position of Director General of the Administrative Division of the Foreign Ministry. In 2003 he returned to the Foreign Service as Minister Counsellor at the Embassy of Guatemala in Honduras, where he acted as Chargé d’Affaires Ad Hoc.

He was appointed Director General for Bilateral International Relations in 2006, and was promoted to the position of Deputy Minister four years later, in 2010. Because of Guatemala’s foreign policy towards Belize, in 2011 he became the Executive Secretary of the Commission of Belize in Guatemala. In March 2012, he was once again appointed Deputy Minister in charge of foreign policy issues.

He has also acted as General Coordinator for Guatemala of two General Assemblies of the Organization of American States (OAS) (2013 and 2014) and as National Coordinator of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) since its creation; of the Ibero-American Summit; and of Guatemala’s Presidency Pro Tempore of the Central American Integration System (SICA) (2000 and 2011). In addition, he has represented Guatemala at international forums and conventions.

He has received a number of Guatemalan and international honours, such as the Order of the Aztec Eagle (Sash class) from the Government of Mexico (2016), the White Nun Medal (second class) conferred by the Guatemalan Ministry of Defence (2015), the Order of the Brilliant Star with Grand Cordon of the Government of Taiwan Province of China (2015), the Order of Isabel the Catholic (Commander by Number class) of Spain (2014) and the Order of Bernardo O’Higgins (Grand Cross class) of Chile (2012), among others.

In the academic sphere, he has carried out lecturing and training in different aspects of foreign policy. He holds a degree in Legal and Social Sciences from the University of San Carlos of Guatemala and studied Governance of Shared Waters at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. He has participated in courses on Boundary Demarcation and Maintenance and on Geographic Information in Boundary-Making and Dispute Resolution at the University of Durham (United Kingdom).