Momen became a civil servant, serving as private secretary to the minister of rural development, local government and cooperatives from 1973 to 1974; private secretary to the minister of trade and commerce, and mineral resources and petroleum from 1974 to 1975; section officer, South Asia, East Asia and Middle East, Ministry of Commerce from 1975 to 1976; and director, Office of the President's Advisor on Trade and Commerce from 1976 to 1978. Meanwhile, he completed an LLB in law and jurisprudence from Central College, Dhaka, in 1976.[6]
In 1998, Momen became an economic adviser at the Saudi Industrial Development Fund (SIDF). He left Saudi Arabia in the wake of the 2003 Riyadh compound bombings, and returned to Massachusetts. There he taught in the Department of Economics and Business Administration at Framingham State College until appointed Bangladesh's permanent representative to the United Nations in New York in August 2009.[6]
Momen served as president of the UNICEF executive board at the international level in 2010.[8][9] He was vice president and acting president of the 67thUnited Nations General Assembly.[10] He was the president of the United Nations High-Level Committee on South-South Cooperation in 2014.[10]
Momen's elder brother, Bangladesh's Minister of Finance Abul Maal Abdul Muhith, hoped that Momen would succeed him as a member of the parliament representing the Sylhet-1 constituency in the 2018 general election, which he eventually won.[11][2]
Yahoo news[12] reported that Abdul Momen said in February 2020 that Bangladesh had "no obligation" to provide shelter to Rohingya refugees who were stranded in the Andaman Sea on a ship. He asked the UNHCR to take the responsibility.[13][14]
^"Dr. A.K. Abdul Momen". Permanent Mission of the People's Republic of Bangladesh to the United Nations. Archived from the original on 15 September 2016. Retrieved 1 September 2016.