The Department of Foreign Affairs condoles with the family of former DFA Secretary Roberto R. Romulo who passed away last January 23.
Secretary Romulo was a visionary as he was an accomplished diplomat who had Philippine interests at heart while serving the country as Ambassador to Belgium, Luxembourg, and the European Union Institutions (1989- 1992), and later as Secretary of Foreign Affairs (1992 – 1995). He will be remembered for bringing forward Philippine Foreign Policy in a post-Cold War context, helping to shape how regional security would be discussed in the years to come through his support for the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) in 1994.
Secretary Romulo is also the father of institutional economic diplomacy at the DFA, directly supervising the Department’s economic diplomacy unit. He commissioned the UNDP to publish six volumes of the Economic Diplomacy Handbook, which is still used to this day.
With these and numerous other accomplishments, he will be fondly recalled by the women and men of the Department of Foreign Affairs as a statesman that upheld the ideals of excellence in the conduct of diplomacy. (DFA)-rir
