Javier Perez de Cuellar, the two-term United Nations secretary-general has died.
Peru’s foreign ministry said he died at age 100 on Thursday March 5th 2020.
Part of Javier Perez de Cuellar’s achievement was his ability to broker a historic ceasefire between Iran and Iraq in 1988. Also, he came out of retirement to help re-establish democracy in Peru.
His son, Francisco Perez de Cuellar, disclosed that his father died at home of natural causes.
“Javier Perez de Cuellar was an outstanding Peruvian, a full-bodied democrat, who dedicated his life and work to making our country great,” tweeted Peruvian President Martin Vizcarra.
Perez de Cuellar had a long diplomatic career that brought him full circle from his first posting as secretary at the Peruvian embassy in Paris in 1944 to a later job as Peru’s ambassador to France.
When he began his tenure as UN secretary-general on January 1, 1982, the little-known Peruvian was the compromise candidate at a time when the UN was held in low esteem.
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Serving as UN undersecretary-general for special political affairs, he emerged as the dark horse candidate in December 1981 after six weeks of deadlock between UN chief Kurt Waldheim and Tanzanian Foreign Minister Salim Ahmed Salim.
Disturbed by the UN’s dwindling effectiveness, he sought to revitalise the world body’s faulty peacekeeping machinery.
With the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and with conflicts raging in Afghanistan and Cambodia and between Iran and Iraq, he complained to the General Assembly that UN resolutions “are increasingly defied or ignored by those that feel themselves strong enough to do so”.
“The problem with the United Nations is that either it’s not used or misused by member countries,” he said in an interview at the end of his first year as UN secretary-general.
During his decade as UN chief, Perez de Cuellar would earn a reputation more for diligent, quiet diplomacy than charisma.
In July 1986, Perez de Cuellar underwent a quadruple coronary bypass operation, putting in question his ability to do a second term. From the outset, Perez de Cuellar had insisted that he would be a one-term secretary-general.
