Before assuming duties as the Assistant Director General of Communication and Information of UNESCO, Ambassador Karklins served as the Latvian Ambassador to France, Andorra, Monaco and UNESCO. He was as well the Permanent Representative of Latvia to the United Nations in Geneva.
During his stay in Geneva, he served as the First Vice-Chairman, and one year later as Chairman of the Council of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). He has held several elected posts in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and UN Commission of Science and Technology for Development, as well as presided over the Group of Governmental Experts on Cluster Munitions within the framework of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). He also served as the Vice-President of the Preparatory Committee of the Geneva Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) and was President of the Preparatory Committee of the Tunis Phase of WSIS.
Ambassador Karklins represented Latvia in the Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN and Chaired this Committee from 2007 until June 2010.
Prior to the posting in Geneva, he served as the Under-secretary of State in Latvia. He also served as Counsellor in the Latvian Embassies in both France and Finland. He has an engineering degree from the Riga Technical University in Latvia and attended an Executive Education Program for Eastern European diplomats at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University in the USA.