Brian Urquhart, early leader of United Nations, dies at 101
Brian Urquhart, who was the second officer to be hired by the United Nations after its formation in 1945 and who helped shape and manage the organization in the final years of the Cold War, died this Saturday at his Massachusetts residence at the age of 101.
His daughter, Rachel Urquhart, reported the death to the local media on Sunday, although she did not give a specific cause of death.
Urquhart was considered one of the most influential figures in the United Nations, having been an outstanding advisor to five of the organisation's secretaries general and having put into practice the principles on which the UN is based.
Born in Dorset, UK, in 1919, he was part of the British Army during World War II, something he said led to a "very practical idealism" that guided his career after his traumatic experiences during the war.
In the mid-1950s, as one of the few with military experience among the staff close to Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold, he helped implement UN peace missions through the establishment of the UN Emergency Force, which in 1956 was sent to oversee the cessation of hostilities in the Suez Canal between Egypt and Israel.
UN peace missions are considered to be his great legacy and, despite not being named in the UN Charter, meant the deployment of unarmed or lightly armed soldiers to help monitor the implementation of peace agreements, whose blue helmets have continued to be seen in crisis areas of the world.
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 hostile conflicts, such as those in the Congo, Cyprus, Kashmir, Namibia and the Middle East.
His role in the UN was recognised this Sunday by the current Secretary General of the United Nations, António Guterres, who said in a press release that "Sir Brian’s imprint on the United Nations was as profound as that of anyone in the Organization’s history”.
"As an aide to Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld, he helped to define the UN’s scope of action in addressing armed conflict and other global challenges. And as a close associate of Ralph Bunche, the renowned UN official and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Sir Brian helped to establish and then propel international peacekeeping into wide-ranging use”," Guterres said.
Alongside his official responsibilities, Urquhart was perceived as the unofficial historian of the UN, and championed public perception of the organisation through his autobiography 'A Life in Peace and War', as well as lengthy reviews in the New York Review of Books, where he continued to write even after his 90th birthday.