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Brian Urquhart, who was the second diplomat hired by the United Nations after its creation in 1945, and who helped shape the organization in the waning years of the Cold War, died Saturday in Massachusetts at the age of 101.
The news was announced today by her daughter, Rachel Urquhart, to the local press, but without specifying the cause of death.
Urquhart was considered one of the most influential figures in the United Nations, having been a distinguished adviser to five secretaries-general of the organization and idealized the principles on which the UN is based.
Born in Dorset, UK, in 1919, he served in the British Army during World War II, something that he admitted to having taught him all the “very practical idealism” that guided his diplomatic career.
In the mid-1950s, being one of the few with military experience in the team closest to Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjold at the time, he helped carry out UN peacekeeping missions by creating the Emergency Forces of the UN, which, in 1956, were sent to oversee the end of hostilities between Egypt and Israel in the Suez Canal.
The UN peacekeeping missions are considered his great legacy, although they are not included in the United Nations Charter.
These missions, which aim to send armed or unarmed soldiers to accompany the implementation of the peace accords, are now known as the ‘blue helmets’ and are still present in various areas of the world that are in crisis.
Although Urquhart spent much of his career at the UN headquarters in New York, he was also a mediator and diplomat in some of the most complicated conflicts that the United Nations has followed, such as those in Congo, Cyprus, Kashmir, Namibia and the Middle East. .
His role at the UN was recognized today by current United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, who said in a statement that “the brand that Brian [Urquhart] The left is one of the deepest in the history of the organization.
“As an advisor to Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, he helped define the scope of UN action in the face of armed conflict and other global challenges. And as a close assistant to the [cientista político] Ralph Bunche, the recognized UN member and Nobel Peace Prize winner, helped establish and then push forward peacekeeping missions, “Guterres said.
In addition to his official responsibilities, Sir Brian Urquhart was seen as the unofficial historian of the UN, and defended the public perception of the organization in his autobiography “A Life in Peace and War”, in addition to writing several reviews for the New York Review of Books.
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