Deon Brown
New York:

A long career in diplomacy comes to a close as Jamaica’s UN Ambassador ends his tour of duty.

Friends and colleagues gathered at the Jamaican Mission to the United Nations recently to bid fond farewell to Ambassador Raymond Wolfe who is retiring from the Foreign Service after a nearly four-decade career.

Ambassador Wolfe demits office at the end of the month having served as Jamaica’s Permanent Representative to the UN for the last six years.

In almost forty years of service, he has worked in a number of missions globally, including in the former Soviet Union during the Cold War years of the late 1970s and early 1980s; in Nigeria and Japan in the mid-1990s as well as in Canada where he was posted from 1998-2003 as Jamaica’s High Commissioner.

While serving at head office in Kingston on different occasions, he oversaw the European Affairs Department of the Foreign Ministry and was Under Secretary for the Multilateral Affairs Division prior to his New York posting in 2006.

Ambassador Wolfe actually did two stints in New York serving first for six years from 1984-1990 as a Counsellor at the UN Mission before returning several years later to assume the top diplomatic post.

BLESSED

“I’ve been blessed by having served for 39 years -.Coming back to New York was fitting for me because this is the best place to end one’s career.

I made friendships right across the board,” he told the gathering of international diplomats, staff members and other well-wishers.

The ambassador also used the occasion to heap praises on his staff, underscoring, “No Ambassador can ever succeed without the strength and support of the staff behind you.

I want to say to my staff without you there’d be no me.” While he has led Jamaica on several initiatives and championed issues on Jamaica and CARICOM’s behalf, he counts among his proudest achievements his chairmanship of the committee for the establishment of a permanent memorial to honour the victims of Slavery and the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade as the global community observed the 200th Anniversary of the ending of the Slave Trade in 2007 which claimed the lives of untold millions and shaped the history of Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas.