1. Jayantha Dhanapala was a distinguished member of Constitutional Council of Sri Lanka and he was the Senior Special Advisor on Foreign Relations to President Maithripala Sirisena, and was Sri Lanka's official candidate for the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations, before withdrawing from the race on 29 September 2006.
Jayantha Dhanapala was born in Sri Lanka on 30 December 1938.
Jayantha Dhanapala gained a reputation as an all-rounder as a schoolboy and was awarded the Ryde Gold Medal in 1956.
At the age of 17 Jayantha Dhanapala won a contest with an essay titled "The World We Want".
Jayantha Dhanapala entered the Sri Lanka Overseas Service and served in the Sri Lankan High Commission in London, Beijing, Washington, DC, New Delhi and Geneva.
Jayantha Dhanapala was widely acclaimed for his presidency of the 1995 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review and Extension Conference, a landmark event in disarmament history, because of his crafting of a package of decisions balancing the twin objectives of nuclear non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament and the concerns of the nuclear weapon states and the non-nuclear weapon states which was adopted without a vote.
The New York Times observed that Jayantha Dhanapala 'was a diplomat mostly unknown outside the arms-control world until he was elected to preside over this conference.
Jayantha Dhanapala was hand-picked by UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan to take on the challenging job of Under Secretary General to re-establish the Department of Disarmament after the UN reforms of 1997, serving from 1998 to 2003.
Jayantha Dhanapala broke new ground both in-house in taking managerial initiatives in gender mainstreaming and in work-life issues, as well as in the disarmament field by innovating the exchange of weapons for a development programme in Albania and other areas, and in the cross-sectoral linking of disarmament with development, the environment and peace education programmes.
Jayantha Dhanapala was one of the seven official nominees for the 2006 United Nations Secretary-General selection.
Jayantha Dhanapala died in Kandy on 27 May 2023, at the age of 84.
Jayantha Dhanapala was named "the Sri Lankan of the year" by the business magazine LMD in 2006.