Sérgio Vieira de Mello (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈsɛʁʒju viˈejɾɐ dʒi ˈmɛlu]; 15 March 1948 – 19 August 2003) was a Brazilian United Nations diplomat who worked on several UN humanitarian and political programs for over 34 years. The Government of Brazil posthumously awarded the Sergio Vieira de Mello Medal to honor his legacy in promoting sustainable peace, international security and better living conditions for individuals in situations of armed conflict, challenges to which Sérgio Vieira de Mello had dedicated his life and career.
He was killed in the Canal Hotel bombing in Iraq along with 20 other members of his staff on 19 August 2003 while working as UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, with the rank of Under-Secretary-General, and United Nations Special Representative for Iraq. Before his death, he was considered a likely candidate for UN Secretary-General.
Early life, education, and early career
Vieira de Mello was born in Rio de Janeiro to the diplomat Arnaldo Vieira de Mello and his wife Gilda dos Santos on 15 March 1948. He had an older sister, Sônia, who suffered schizophrenia throughout her adult life. Vieira de Mello was interested in rocket science as a child. The family followed Arnaldo's diplomatic postings, such that Sérgio spent his early years in Buenos Aires, Genoa, Milan, Beirut and Rome.
In 1965, he was studying philosophy at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, but since classes were frequently disrupted by strikes, he opted to continue his education in Europe. He continued at the University of Paris, where he studied philosophy under Vladimir Jankélévitch. While there, he stayed at an apartment at the Maison de l’Argentine, the student housing at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris dedicated to students with families from Latin America.
He participated in the 1968 student riots in Paris against the Charles de Gaulle government, and was hit in the head by a police baton, causing a permanent disfigurement above his right eye. He also wrote a letter published in the French leftist journal Combat in support of the riots, which made his return to Brazil, at this stage a military dictatorship, potentially dangerous. Thus, after graduating from the Sorbonne in 1969, he moved to Geneva to stay with a family friend, and found his first job as an editor at the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
Early in his career, he also completed an MA in moral philosophy and a PhD by correspondence from the Sorbonne. His doctorate thesis, submitted in 1974, was entitled The Role of Philosophy in Contemporary Society. In 1985, he submitted a second "state" doctorate, the highest degree in the French education system, entitled Civitas Maxima: Origins, Foundations and Philosophical and Political Significance of the Supranationality Concept. In addition to his native Portuguese, Vieira de Mello was fluent in English, Spanish, Italian, and French, along with conversational knowledge of local languages of the countries he was stationed in, such as Arabic and Tetum.
From UNHCR, Vieira de Mello moved to the field in Bangladesh during its War of Independence in 1971, and Sudan in 1972 following the Addis Ababa agreement that ended the First Sudanese Civil War and allowed the return of some 650,000 Sudanese refugees and displaced persons, and Cyprus after the Turkish invasion in 1974.
These early assignments were operational, rather than political; he was helping to organize food aid, shelter and other types of aid to refugees. Vieira de Mello remained in the field, with a posting in Mozambique to assist refugees fleeing white rule and civil war in Zimbabwe (at the time, still Rhodesia) where he was deputy head of the office. Due to the absence of his boss, he was effectively running the mission.
Vieira de Mello spent three years in charge of UNHCR operations in Mozambique during the civil war that followed its independence from Portugal in 1975, and three more years in Peru. Vieira de Mello also served as Special Envoy for the UNHCR for Cambodia, being the first and only UN Representative to hold talks with the Khmer Rouge. He became a senior political adviser to the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon between 1981 and 1983. In 1985, he returned to Latin America to serve as head of the Argentina office in Buenos Aires.
He spent the 1990s involved in the clearing of land mines in Cambodia, and then in Yugoslavia. After working on the refugee problem in central Africa, he was made Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees in 1996 and became Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator two years later. He would hold this position simultaneously with others until January 2001.
On 11 June 1999, he was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Kosovo (SRSGK) in the acting capacity, and thus became the first chief of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK), that was established on 10 June 1999, by the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244. His term in Kosovo (autonomous province in Serbia, within the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) ended already on 14 July 1999, when Bernard Kouchner was appointed as SRSGK in the full capacity.
Vieira de Mello was instrumental in dealing with the issue of boat people in Hong Kong. In mid-2000, he visited Fiji together with Don McKinnon, the Commonwealth of Nations' Secretary-General, in an attempt to assist in finding a negotiated settlement to the hostage situation, in which Fiji's Prime Minister and other members of Parliament were kidnapped and held as hostages during the 2000 Fijian coup d'état.
Before becoming the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2002, he was the UN Transitional Administrator in East Timor from December 1999 to May 2002, guiding the former Indonesia's 27th province to independence.
In May 2003 Vieira de Mello was appointed as the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General to Iraq, an appointment initially intended to last for four months. According to The New York Times Magazine journalist James Traub in his book The Best Intentions, Vieira de Mello turned down the appointment three times before Kofi Annan was pressured by US President George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice. According to Samantha Power in her book Sérgio: One Man's Fight to Save the World, Vieira de Mello met Bush in March 2003, and the two men discussed the human rights situation in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, a controversial issue for the United States. In June 2003, Vieira de Mello was part of a team responsible for inspecting Abu Ghraib prison before it was rebuilt.
Vieira de Mello was working as a United Nations Special Representative for Iraq when he was killed in the Canal Hotel bombing. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leader of the al-Qaeda terrorist organization, claimed responsibility for the blast. A communiqué from al-Qaeda said that de Mello was assassinated because he had helped East Timor become an independent state, thereby stealing territory from the Islamic caliphate.
He had been mentioned in some circles as a suitable candidate for UN Secretary-General. His death was widely mourned, largely on account of his reputation for effectively working to promote peace. Vieira de Mello had previously stated that he wished to be buried in Rio de Janeiro, his hometown, and the place he lived for 34 years. However, his body was taken away from Brazil and he was buried at the Cimetière des Rois in the Plainpalais district of Geneva, Switzerland. Vieira was honoured in his hometown of Rio de Janeiro where he was given a state funeral with full military honors. His funeral was attended by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other international dignitaries. He was survived by his two sons, Adrien and Laurent.
In 1973, Vieira de Mello met and married Annie Personnaz, a French staff member at UNHCR Headquarters in Geneva, with whom he had two sons, Laurent and Adrien. They lived in the French town of Thonon-les-Bains, before moving a few years later to a permanent home in the French village of Massongy, near the Geneva border. The couple separated before Vieira de Mello's death, with a divorce lawsuit filed on 9 January 2003, which was never executed.