Refugees Magazine Issue 132: (Protection) – Sergio Vieira de Mello, 15 March 1948 – 19 August 2003

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Sergio Vieira de Mello
15 March 1948 – 19 August 2003

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"I have been sent here with a mandate to assist the Iraqi people and those responsible for the administration of this land to achieve freedom, the possibility of managing their own destiny and determining their own future."

Sergio Vieira de Mello was eloquently outlining the goals of his latest mission shortly after arriving in Iraq earlier this year. In the wake of his death and those of 22 other colleagues when a truck bomb demolished the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad, those words became an apt epitaph not just for Vieira de Mello’s doomed journey to Iraq, but for a lifelong career helping the world’s most vulnerable people – in Africa, Asia, Kosovo and East Timor.

A Brazilian national, educated in his homeland and at the Sorbonne in Paris, fluent in Portuguese, Spanish, French and English, Vieira de Mello began a 33-year-long United Nations career in 1969 as an assistant editor with the U.N. refugee agency.

Pragmatic, discreet, a citizen of the developing world, but equally at ease with his elegant style in a refugee camp or in rarefied political circles, Vieira de Mello served UNHCR in trouble spots around the globe before becoming Assistant High Commissioner in 1996.

He moved to New York in 1998 as U.N. Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief. As Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s special representative, he first helped to steer the troubled province of Kosovo back towards a peaceful future and then guide East Timor to independence, possibly his finest achievement .

He was named U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights in September 2002 and had taken a four-month leave of absence to once more become the United Nations chief troubleshooter in Iraq.

Vieira de Mello had intimations of trouble ahead. "The United Nations presence in Iraq remains vulnerable to any who seek to target our organization ," he had told the U.N. Security Council in New York shortly before heading back to the Middle East.

"All too often, it is the best people who are sent to the most challenging places," UNHCR High Commissioner Ruud Lubbers said following his death, but Vieira de Mello had paid "the ultimate price in the process. He was a true gentleman ... who fought for human rights and the dignity of the downtrodden ."

Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Vieira de Mello’s death "was a bitter blow for the United Nations and for me personally. The death of any colleague is hard to bear, but I could think of no one we could spare less."

Former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Nancy Soderberg summed up the secret of a dazzling career cut short by a terrorist bomb: "He could deal with kings and diplomats and ordinary refugees with the same enthusiasm and sense of respect ."

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Source: Refugees Magazine Issue 132: "The Changing Face of Protection" (September 2003). Download the complete issue in pdf format: low-resolution (620Kb) here or high-resolution (1.8Mb) here

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