Sadruddin Aga Khan

Sadruddin Aga Khan (1991)

Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan (born January 17, 1933 in Neuilly-sur-Seine , † May 12, 2003 in Boston ) was the UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 1965 to 1977 .

He was the son of Prince Aga Khan III, who died in 1957 . , then head of the Ismailis , and his second wife, Andrée Joséphine Carron. He was an uncle of Karim Aga Khan IV , who later became the 49th Imam of the Ishmaelites.

Prince Sadruddin had an Iranian, French and Swiss passport. He was fluent in French, English, German and Italian.

He studied at Harvard and at the Center of Middle Eastern Studies. His professional career began as a publisher of the Paris Review . From 1958 Sadruddin Aga Khan worked as a consultant for UNESCO . In 1959 he moved to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) , where he held the post of High Commissioner for Refugees from 1965 to 1977. During his tenure there were refugee crises in Biafra , Bangladesh , Vietnam and Chile . His nomination for the office of Secretary General of the United Nations failed in 1981 due to the veto of the Soviet Union . From 1988 to 1990 Sadruddin Aga Khan was the coordinator of the UN humanitarian aid projects in Afghanistan . A renewed nomination as UN Secretary General was again unsuccessful in 1991.

In 1978 he received the United Nations Human Rights Award . In 1979 Sadruddin Aga Khan was awarded the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal of Honor of the German Society for the United Nations, and in 1991 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .

Sadruddin Aga Khan lived mainly in Switzerland. In 1957 he married Nina Dyer (1930–1965), the divorced wife of Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza de Kászon , from whom he was divorced in 1962. In 1972 he married Katherine Beriketti.

Sadruddin Aga Khan was a collector of Islamic books and works of art. After the end of his UN career, he founded the “Bellerive” Foundation in Geneva in 1977, which is committed to environmental protection, minority rights and peace research. In 1981 he called for worldwide laws against animal testing , which he rejected for ethical reasons.

He died in Boston, Massachusetts in 2003.

Awards

• Commander of the French Legion of Honor (1979)
• Order of Homayoun First Class (Iran)
• Order of Star of the Nile (Sudan)
• Papal New Year's Eve Order (KCSS)
• Order of Hilal-e-Pakistan
• Commander with the Star of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland
• Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE)
• Honorary Doctorate from Fletcher School, Tufts University (1986)
• Honorary doctorate from the University of Nice (1988)
• Honorary Doctorate from the University of Leeds (1992)
• Honorary Citizen of the City of Geneva

Web links

Commons : Sadruddin Aga Khan  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Sadruddin Aga Khan in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Individual evidence

1. ^ List of previous recipients. (PDF; 43 kB) United Nations Human Rights, April 2, 2008, accessed on December 29, 2008 (English). 
2. ↑ Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan: Restless destruction brings no health. In: Welt am Sonntag magazine. October 18, 1981.