Video Editor: Sandeep Suman & Ashutosh Bhardwaj
Nikki Haley, the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, is currently on a two-day visit to India. The US envoy arrived in Delhi on 26 June and will be in India till 28 June. According to The Times of India, this is her maiden visit to India after being appointed the US ambassador to the UN.
Over the course of her visit, which is supposed to ''solidify" the US's "love for India", Haley is slated meet senior Indian officials, NGO and business leaders, students and the inter-faith community, reported The Times of India.
But what do we know about Haley, apart from the fact that she represents the United States in the United Nations?
Haley was born Nimrata Randhawa to parents of Sikh origin, in Bamberg, South Carolina, according to NDTV.
Nikki, as she was called by her family, has had a meteoric career in the US politics. She was first a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives, a position which she held for six years before going on to win the gubernatorial elections for the state in 2010, according to The Telegraph. This win made her the country’s first Indian-American female governor.
In 2016, she was listed by Time magazine as one of the “100 Most Influential People”.
Haley was sworn into the role of US ambassador to the UN on 25 January 2017 and is touted as one of the most visible ambassadors. She has been vocal about Russia having meddled in the 2016 elections, and was instrumental in leading the UN Security Council into imposing sanctions on North Korea, according to Fox. It was in part due to these efforts that brought Kim Jong Un to the negotiating table in Singapore in June 2018.
The former governor of South Carolina is heavily involved in humanitarian causes, visiting Syrian refugee camps in Jordan and Turkey and has demanded Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s ouster in order to bring peace to the country, reported The Guardian.
Recently, she was the face of the US’s withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council, saying that the body had become a “protector of human rights abusers, and a cesspool of political bias”, according to BBC.
Reports state that she maintains good relations with US President Donald Trump and is even being groomed by him for a larger, national political role. In 2012, Mitt Romney considered Haley as a vice-presidential running mate, reported Huffington Post. In 2016 also, she was mentioned as a potential vice-presidential candidate, according to The Economist.
Many political experts also see her as a potential future presidential candidate.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)