Arvid Pardo

Arvid Pardo (born February 12, 1914 in Rome , Italy , † June 19, 1999 in Seattle or Houston , United States ) was a Maltese diplomat, schoolmaster and university professor. He is known as the founder of the Convention on the Law of the Sea .

family

His native of Malta father died in 1922 during a relief mission in the Soviet Union to typhoid . His Swedish mother succumbed to an appendectomy a year later and his brother died in a car accident. He became the ward of his uncle, the Italian diplomat Bernardo Attolico , who was ambassador to Brazil , the Soviet Union, the Third Reich and the Holy See , among other things . Attolico sent him to the school at the Collegio Mondragone in Frascati and the young Pardo spent his school holidays with his uncle.

Pardo was fluent in Italian , English , French , Swedish and Spanish as well as pretty good German . During the pre-war period in Rome he met Margit Claeson (1911-2010), a Swedish textile designer, and in 1947, after he had settled in Italy again, he traveled to Sweden to find her - the two had contact during the war lost - and married her. The connection resulted in three children: Christina (* 1949), Lars (* 1950) and David (* 1951), all of whom were raised in Great Britain. In 1967 he met Elisabeth Mann Borgese in the USA , who is considered to be the architect of the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and who became his partner.

education

Pardo earned a degree in diplomatic history from the University of Tours , France, in 1938 and a PhD from La Sapienza University in Rome in 1939 . When the Second World War began, he became active in the political resistance against the Partito Nazionale Fascista and was therefore arrested in 1940. After the fall of Benito Mussolini , he was released in September 1943, but arrested again by the Gestapo and sentenced to death in Berlin . When the Red Army approached Berlin in 1945, Swiss diplomats and the International Committee of the Red Cross arranged for his release. After the Soviets captured Berlin, Pardo was arrested again and interrogated. When he was released, he crossed the Elbe , where he made contact with British and US troops. He was sent to London , where he arrived penniless.

Career at the United Nations

Initially, Pardo worked as a dishwasher and waiter in a London restaurant chain until he found a friend of his father's. David Owen was involved in building the United Nations in London at the time. Owen hired him as an assistant in the documentation department and despite his doctorate, Pardo worked in 1945 and 1946 as a simple clerk responsible for the archives. He then served on the UN Trust Council until 1960 , when he joined the Secretariat of the Technical Assistance Board (a predecessor of the United Nations Development Program (UNDP)). Here he held the post of Deputy Envoy in Nigeria and Ecuador . In 1964 he became the first permanent UN ambassador to Malta, which had just gained independence .

A lasting achievement of Pardo's tenure as UN ambassador, which ended in 1971 after Dom Mintoff returned to office, is his work in maritime law reform. On November 1, 1967, he gave a widely acclaimed speech to the United Nations General Assembly calling for international rules to ensure safety and peace at sea, as well as to prevent further pollution and to protect the resources of the oceans . It was from him that the oceans were part of the “common heritage of mankind”, which forms part of Article 136 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea , and that part of the wealth of the seabed be used to finance a fund should to close the gap between poor and rich nations. It was Pardo who initiated the fifteen-year process, which culminated when the signing of the Convention began in 1982, and solicited support in the early years. The almost unanimous adoption of resolution 2749 of the UN General Assembly on December 17, 1970 was thanks to him. This resolution includes principles about the seas and their resources that later became part of the convention. In the end, however, Pardo was unhappy that the final version provided for an exclusive economic zone and complained that the general human heritage had been reduced to "a few fish and a little seaweed" .

From 1967 to 1971 Pardo was also Malta's Ambassador to the United States, and from 1969 onwards also Envoy to Canada . He was the representative of Malta in the Preparatory Commission for the 1972 Conference on the Law of the Sea and led the Maltese delegation to the UN Seabed Committee from 1971 to 1973. From 1972 to 1975 Pardo was coordinator of the oceanic study program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington . From 1975 to 1990 he taught at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, first political science (until 1981) and then international relations (1981–1990).

Pardo was made a Knight of the Order of Malta in 1992 . He lived in the United States until his death, where he died in Seattle in 1999; however, other sources state that he lived and died in Houston.

literature

• Maltese at UN a Rare Diplomat. In: The New York Times , Jan. 24, 1965, p. 21.
• Malta's Imaginative and Erudite UN Delegate. In: The New York Times , December 10, 1969, p. 5.
• Carl Q. Christol: In Memoriam. In: Political Science and Politics , 1999, pp. 777-778, via JSTOR .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The Seattle Times, November 7, 2010 , accessed May 26, 2013.
2. ^ His children - Elisabeth, Monika, Michael In: thomasmann.de, undated, accessed on May 25, 2013.
3. ↑ Official Records of the General Assembly, Twenty-second Session, First Committee, 1515 th meeting [verbatim record , November 1, 1967 (A / C.1 / PV.1515)] (PDF; 2.1 MB).
4. ↑ "'Arvid Pardo' Commemorative Evening" , accessed January 17, 2007
5. ↑ USC USC death notice , accessed January 17, 2007
6. ^ Deep Sea-Bed Mining Under Customary International Law , accessed January 17, 2007
7. ↑ Center for War / Peace Studies Global Report ( Memento of the original dated June 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ "In Memoriam"
9. ^ International Seabed Authority: Press Release ( Memento June 30, 2004 in the Internet Archive ), accessed January 17, 2007
10. ↑ Foreign Affairs Diary ( memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) of the Maltese DiploFoundation , quotation from an unnamed local newspaper of June 23, 1999, originally Retrieved January 17, 2007
11. ↑ - Science Blog of July 16, 1999 with reference to the press office of the UN