Reflections of a Retire International Civil Servant

After over twenty-eight years of service with the United Nations, I reached the end of my career last October. As I am charting the journey ahead, I have the sensation of a homecoming vessel sitting in the lock at the river mouth, the sliding gate safely closed behind. While the lock is being filled and the vessel quietly awaiting the upcoming leisurely inland voyage, the sea on the other side of the sliding gate, with its perpetual vagaries, surges on. It is time for reminiscence.

I consider myself fortunate to have been with the United Nations during this particular period of the Organization’s life. During this period, principally thanks to the United Nations, peace and justice have become more and more visibly the objectives of the conscious efforts of many, rather than merely ideals advocated by a few. During this period also, the individual person and human values have more and more become the center of the Organization’s concerns. During this period, the United Nations is more and more living up to what it should be: a concrete expression of the human conscience. From this point of view, the decision of the Nobel Prize Committee to grant this year’s Peace Prize to the United Nations and its secretary general is a timely recognition for the evolution, however painful and however tentative, of this human conscience since the end of the last World War.

We simultaneous interpreters have the privilege of observing firsthand the process from germination to fruition of agreements, conventions and declarations that would form part of this evolution. I have always been impressed by the level of determination as well as difficulties involved in the negotiations for these instruments and always shared the jubilation of the diplomats on the floor at their adoption. More often than not, however, I also had to share their frustration when a sudden reversal of positions negated the work of many years of concerted toil.

Looking back, I cannot but be amazed by the fact that some of these instruments were adopted at all. This is particularly true listening to the uncompromising arguments advanced by diplomats based on national and ideological grounds during the negotiations. Thus, the adoption of these instruments, it seems to me, reveals an unsuspected secret of fundamental importance: in each case there in fact exists a consideration which arches over and above the vociferously defended national and ideological interests, and that the negotiators recognize and decide to bow to this consideration. It suggests that, in spite of all outward appearances, there exists in fact within human conscience a commonly recognizable higher interest that cuts across all national and ideological concerns. The question is in finding it. I think I have been witnessing the slow and hesitant evolution of the United Nations into a forum that would nurture a culture of willingness to find this higher interest.

The essential theme of this culture seems to be an active kind of tolerance, dissociated from the connotation of passivity usually attached to the word Tolerance. It is not a tolerance for injustice, impunity or arrogance, but a willingness to give validity to things and ideas hitherto unseen or unacceptable. Tolerance for the new brings progress, tolerance for the different, coexistence and peace, therefore prosperity. The world might have been endowed with more, and better adhered to, agreements and conventions had diplomats and politicians been less inclined to mistake intolerance as synonymous to assertion of national or ideological interests.

The culture of tolerance is not only needed in international politics or among diplomats around the negotiating table. It is achingly needed at lesser levels, such as within the administration of an organization and among organizations. There are sufficient examples within and outside the United Nations System to testify to the difference a culture of active tolerance can make in improving relationship between departments and among colleagues, and with it their performance.

I would be an old fool to think that this active tolerance were panacea or already here to stay. Nor could I accept any suggestion that the human race has learned nothing during these twenty-eight years and that my career with the United Nations has only been part of this mindlessness. I think I’d rather be called an old romantic who believes in the future of mankind and the part a culture of active tolerance can play in its realization.

On that note, I think I am ready to continue. When the lock fills up and as I set sail to re-embark, I shall proudly hoist the azure blue UN flag at my stern.