Sir Brian Urquhart has led an extraordinary life, much of which has been spent in and around the United Nations system -- experience which accounts for his international stature and visibility in current debates over the future of the United Nations and the role of UN security forces in the post-Cold War era. It is fair to say that he has become the central figure in the dialogue over renewing the United Nations system. He is currently a scholar in residence at the Ford Foundation.
Born in England in 1919, Brian Urquhart was educated at Westminster School and Christ Church, Oxford. After serving in the British army and military intelligence during World War II in North Africa and Europe, he served as a personal assistant to Gladwyn Jebb, who established the preparatory commission of the United Nations in London. Since 1946, Sir Brian's professional life has been, in many respects, a history of the UN itself. He was personal assistant to the first Secretary-General (Trygve Lie) and subsequently served in various capacities under Ralph Bunche between 1954 and 1971. Over this period, Sir Brian was centrally involved in the conferences on peaceful uses of atomic energy, the Congo crisis in the early 1960s, and peacekeeping in Cyprus, Kashmir, and the Middle East. In the period after 1972, Brian Urquhart was one of the principal political advisors of the Secretary-General, and served as the Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, working on Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, and Namibia, among others. He retired from the United Nations Secretariat in 1986.
Across this extraordinary career, Sir Brian has written several books, including brilliant biographies of Dag Hammarskjöld and Ralph Bunche. He has also written an autobiography, A Life in Peace and War, published by W.W. Norton and Company. His books on decolonization, and more recently on reforming the United Nations system, have projected him into the international limelight of transnational politics. A tireless speaker and activist, Sir Brian is deeply involved in the events surrounding the fiftieth UN anniversary. His pieces on the UN volunteer force and the responsibilities of the UN system published in The New York Review of Books in 1993 and 1994 have set the terms of the debate for all future discussions of rethinking the UN system.
See the interview with Sir Brian Urquhart: "A Life in Peace and War" (March 1996).
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