Sérgio Vieira de Mello

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Sérgio Vieira de Mello, 2002

Sérgio Vieira de Mello (born March 15, 1948 in Rio de Janeiro , † August 19, 2003 in Baghdad ) was a high-ranking Brazilian employee of the United Nations and worked, among other things, as Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and from 2002 until his death as High Commissioner the UN for human rights . He was killed along with 21 other people in the bomb attack on the headquarters of the UN mission in the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq .

Life

The son of a Brazilian diplomat graduated from a French-Brazilian high school. In 1969, while studying at the Sorbonne in Paris , Sérgio Vieira de Mello became an employee of the UN Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). He took part in humanitarian and peacekeeping missions by the UN in Bangladesh , Sudan , Cyprus , Mozambique and Peru . From 1981 to 1983 he was political advisor to the UNIFIL mission in Lebanon . He then headed various sub-departments of the UNHCR.

Mello when handing over control from INTERFET to UNTAET

In the 1990s Mello worked in Cambodia , Yugoslavia and the African crisis region of the Great Lakes, among others . In 1996 he was appointed Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees and in 1998 Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Aid Co-ordinator . He also worked as a special envoy for the Secretary General in Kosovo as well as a UN Special Envoy for East Timor and Director of the UN Interim Administration in East Timor (UNTAET).

From 2002 Mello held the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights . After the outbreak of the war in Iraq , he took a leave of absence to work as the Secretary General's special envoy in Iraq.

There, three months after the start of the mission, he was killed on August 19, 2003, when a car bomb exploded in the mission headquarters in the Baghdad Canal Hotel, along with 21 other people (mostly UN personnel). In the same year he was posthumously awarded the United Nations Human Rights Prize. His grave is on the Cimetière des Rois in Geneva .

Sérgio Vieira de Mello was married and the father of two sons.

Honors

Bust of Sérgio Vieira de Mello behind the Palais Wilson in Geneva, 2004
  • The Sergio Vieira de Mello Award ( Sergio Vieira de Mello Award ) is presented every two years by the Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation .
  • The Sergio Vieira de Mello World Citizen Award is part of the UNCA Excellence in Journalism Award .
  • The Polish Sergio Vieira de Mello Prize has been awarded annually since 2004 by the Villa Decius Foundation in Krakow with the support of the Polish President and the Brazilian and Swedish ambassadors in Poland.
  • In Dili , East Timor , the streets Travessa Sérgio Vieira de Mello in Motael and Rua Sérgio Vieira de Mello in Farol are named after the Brazilian. The Sérgio Vieira de Mello Human Rights Prize is awarded by the President .
  • On May 19, 2012, Mello was posthumously awarded the Collar des Ordem de Timor-Leste .
  • In Bologna , Italy , a central piazza was named after de Mello.
  • The anniversary of the death of Vieira de Mellos has been declared the annual World Humanitarian Day by the United Nations .

The students of the 40th diploma course at the Diplomatic Academy Vienna named their year of study after Sérgio Vieira de Mello.

The streaming service Netflix released the feature film Sergio on April 17, 2020 . Mello is portrayed in this by Wagner Moura .

literature

The destroyed building of the UN headquarters in Baghdad
Mello's coffin
  • Jean-Claude Buhrer, Claude B. Levenson: Sergio Vieira de Mello, un espoir foudroyé . Mille et une nuits, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-84205-826-7 .
  • George Gordon-Lennox, Annick Stevenson: Sergio Vieira de Mello: un homme exceptionnel . Éditions du Tricorne, Genève 2004, ISBN 2-8293-0266-4 , p. 143 (En appendice, choix de textes de Sergio Vieira de Mello).
  • Jacques Marcovitch - USP: Sérgio Vieira de Mello - pensamento e memória . 1 Edição edition. 2004, ISBN 85-314-0867-9 (Portuguese, Cód .: 167075; Brochura 344p.).
  • Samantha Power : Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World . The Penguin Press HC, 2008, ISBN 978-1-59420-128-8 (Biography - February 14, 2008).

Web links

Commons : Sérgio Vieira de Mello  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Sergio Vieira de Mello . In: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 45/2003 of October 27, 2003, supplemented by news from MA-Journal up to week 29/2008 (accessed via Munzinger Online ).
  2. ^ List of previous recipients. (PDF; 43 kB) United Nations Human Rights, April 2, 2008, accessed on December 29, 2008 (English).
  3. ↑ Sergio Vieira de Mello Award ( Memento of the original from January 1, 2017 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. Sergio Vieira de Mello Foundation @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sergiovdmfoundation.org
  4. ↑ Jornal da República: DECRETO PRESIDENTE 46/2012 , May 19, 2012 , accessed on April 29, 2020.
  5. ↑ Oliver Rathkolb (Ed.): 250 Years - From the Oriental to the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna: Festschrift . 1st edition. Studies Verlag, Innsbruck 2004, ISBN 3-7065-1921-6 .
  6. ↑ Sergio on imdb.com, accessed on January 22, 2020 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Mello, Sérgio Vieira de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Brazilian employee of the United Nations
DATE OF BIRTH March 15, 1948
PLACE OF BIRTH Rio de Janeiro
DATE OF DEATH August 19, 2003
Place of death Baghdad