Maleeha Lodhi (Urdu: مليحه لودهى; born 15 November 1952) is a Pakistani diplomat, political scientist, and a former Pakistan's Representative to the United Nations.

In February 2015, Lodhi was introduced by Prime Minister Sharif to serve as Permanent Representative and Ambassador of Pakistan to the UN in New York City, making her the first woman to hold the position.

In 1990 she moved to become the founding editor of The News International where she remained until 1993 when she was appointed by Benazir Bhutto as the country's envoy to the United States.

Since 2001, she has also served on the UN Secretary General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Affairs (2001–2005) and continued to do so while holding the post of Pakistan's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom (2003–2008).

We're depicted sometimes as a rogue state, and that is not fair.On 26 July 2003, Lodhi was appointed as the Pakistan's envoy to the Court of St James's, London by General Musharraf who sized power in the 1999 coup d'état.

[27] According to the Daily Times Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after extensive consultations with his close aide Sartaj Aziz, decided to appoint Lodhi in the UN.

After assuming charge as the President of executive board of UNICEF, Lodhi in an Op-Ed for CNN argued that 'We must never accept a world in which humanitarian aid workers can be attacked and killed with impunity.'

[37] On 29 August 2015, Lodhi rang the opening bell at the NASDAQ in New York to signal the ceremonial start of trading, saying Pakistan's economy is on the upswing as it pursues liberal economic and investor-friendly policies.

[39] On 30 May 2016, talking to the students at Harvard Kennedy School, Lodhi claimed that Pakistan's massive military operation aimed at rooting out terrorism is in its final phase but the menace is not going to just go away unless there is peace on the other side of the border in strife-torn Afghanistan.

[41] On 7th Febuaray 2017, Lodhi opposed the G4 nations submission on UN security reform saying that it is "inconceivable" to establish any institution that does not value "principles of representation and accountability" through periodic elections.

"[43][44] On 30 Sep 2019, she was replaced by Munir Akram, on orders of Prime Minister Imran Khan, as Pakistan's Permanent Representative to the United Nations.

[45] According to the New York Times, "Lodhi presents herself as the paradigm of a modern self-made South Asian woman comes in part from her middle-class family heritage.

The report suggested that Lodhi and Raphel often met at The Ritz-Carlton, Washington, D.C. in the 1990s and worked together for the passage of an act by Senator Hank Brown easing sanctions on Pakistan.

The report quoted U.S officials as seeing Lodhi as an "influencer" and saw her a trusted conduit for relaying messages to Pakistan's senior military leadership in Rawalpindi.

[46] In February 2016, Pakistan Today reported that Hillary Clinton email's revealed that Lodhi apparently acted as an informal messenger between the Obama Administration and then army chief General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani.

[47] Lodhi was accused of religious bigotry after she deleted a tweet congratulating Mahershala Ali for his Best Supporting Actor Oscar win in 2017.

However, Lodhi deleted the tweet after other Twitter users "pointed out" that Ali is an [Ahmadiyya]- a member of an Islamic sect who are declared non-Muslims in Pakistani constitution.

[49] Lodhi, while responding to Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj's speech branding Pakistan an "exporter of terrorism", in the midst of her 'right to reply', showed a photo of a woman whose face was peppered with wounds and said, "This is the face of Indian democracy," when in actuality, the image depicted a Gazan Arab minor who had sustained bodily cephalic injury in a purported acid attack.