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'May I Speak a Word or Two Against Brotherhood?'
By Brian Urquhart
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UN photo
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The 7th of August 2003 marked the centenary of the birth
of Ralph Johnson Bunche, the first United Nations recipient
of the Nobel Peace Prize and an individual who was, as Brian
Urquhart recalls in his tribute, "present at the creation"
of the Organization and who at the time of his death in
1971 was hailed as "an international institution in
his own right" (for a fuller profile, please see page
37 in our Nobel Peace Prize section). Recalling memories
of his father in this issue, Ralph Bunche Jr. cites his
"strong belief in the strength of the United Nations
peacekeeping force in the fifties when the political realities
were quite different from those of today". And David
K. J. Jeffrey notes in his article that "with different
opportunities beckoning, he expressly chose the path of
an international civil servant". Ralph Bunche himself,
in his Nobel Lecture (see our Essay) enlarged the definition
of that term by observing that "the United Nations
has no vested interest in the status quo". Indeed,
as Sir Brian (pictured left with Ralph Bunche) affirms,
he "never wavered in his conviction that the United
Nations must, and could, be made to work". |
Ralph Bunche was present at the creation of the
United Nations as a member of the United States State Department
group that began the drafting of the UN Charter under the
direction of Leo Pasvolsky. At the San Francisco Conference
in April 1945, he was the principal drafter of Chapters
XI (Declaration regarding Non-Self-Governing Territories)
and XII (International Trusteeship System). Bunche came
to the UN Secretariat as an expert on colonialism-and on
the decolonization that was soon to come-and trusteeship.
His first task at the United Nations was to set up the Trusteeship
Department. Palestine was a League of Nations mandate and
could, theoretically, have become a Trust Territory. In
1947, Secretary-General Trygve Lie sent Bunche as his personal
representative with the UN Special Commission on Palestine
(UNSCOP). Finding the members of UNSCOP "just about
the worst group I have ever had to work with", he finally
wrote both the majority (partition) and the minority reports
(federation)-"a ghost-writing harlot", he noted.
The Partition Plan was adopted by the General Assembly in
November 1947. Ralph Bunche believed he had seen the last
of the Palestine problem, but in May 1948 the British left
Palestine, the State of Israel was declared, and five Arab
armies invaded the new Jewish State. The Security Council
called for a truce and appointed a mediator, Count Folke
Bernadotte, and Trygve Lie sent Bunche to help him. To pin
down an uneasy truce, Bunche set up the UN Truce Supervision
Organization (UNTSO), which is still in existence, and in
doing so formulated the basic principles of what later became
peacekeeping. He was the inseparable companion and adviser
of the Mediator, but on 17 September 1948 a series of delays
and aircraft breakdowns prevented him from joining Count
Bernadotte in Jerusalem to inspect the future United Nations
headquarters-Government House.
Count Bernadotte and the French observer who took Bunche's
place were assassinated on their way back from Government
House by the extremist Stern Gang. Bunche succeeded as Mediator
and on the island of Rhodes negotiated armistice agreements
between Israel and its four Arab neighbours, a feat that
was widely regarded as impossible and for which he was awarded
the Nobel Peace Prize.
Characteristically, Bunche was inclined to turn down the
Prize on the grounds that he had simply been doing his job,
but Trygve Lie instructed him to accept it for the good
of the Organization.
Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld made Bunche Under-Secretary-General
for Special Political Affairs; his new responsibilities
included critical negotiating and mediating assignments,
as well as the organization and direction of peacekeeping
operations.
During the Suez crisis in 1956, the first UN peace-keeping
force-UN Emergency Force in the Middle East (UNEF I)-arrived
in the Suez Canal area one week after the General Assembly's
decision to establish it.
When asked if this extraordinary haste was due to the fear
of Soviet "volunteers" arriving in the area, Bunche
replied: "We wanted to demonstrate that the United
Nations resolution was not an empty gesture and to avoid
the development of a vacuum in the area … We had a
resolution, but I think not many people thought that very
much could be done quickly about it."
With the same driving sense of urgency, Bunche organized
the observer group-UNOGIL-during the very dangerous crisis
in Lebanon in 1958 and the peacekeeping force in Cyprus-UNFICYP-in
1964. He personally directed the large and complex operation
in the Congo- ONUC-in 1960, for which 3,000 UN troops arrived
in the country within four days of the Security Council
decision to establish the force.
Bunche called Dag Hammarskjöld "the most remarkable
man I have ever seen or worked with", and they became
a strong working team. The Secretary-General's death in
Africa on 17 September 1961-the same date on which Count
Bernadotte had been assassinated 13 years before-was a crushing
blow to Bunche, who on both occasions took the lead in rallying
a shocked and disconsolate UN Secretariat to get on with
the job.
Bunche was the main support of Hammarskjöld's successor,
U Thant and, much against his will, renounced his intention
to leave the United Nations and go back to work on civil
rights because U Thant refused to accept his resignation.
I have mentioned a few highlights of Ralph Bunche's UN career.
His modesty was such that his UN colleagues knew little
or nothing of his earlier achievements.
Born in Detroit, where his father was an itinerant barber,
Bunche was orphaned at eleven and brought up by a formidable
grandmother in the Watts district of Los Angeles. Success
at school, both as student and athlete, took him to the
University of California in Los Angeles and as a graduate
student to Harvard University. Colonialism was the subject
of his prize-winning doctoral thesis, and he did field work
in Cameroon, French Togo, South Africa, Kenya and the Congo.
His writings on the race problem in the United States were
an important prelude to the civil rights movement. In A
World View of Race (1936), he made an original analysis
of the parallels between the race problem in the United
States and the global phenomenon of colonialism. Bunche
set up the Political Science Department at Howard University,
where he was an influential professor and teacher. He was
Gunnar Myrdal's chief assistant and researcher in producing
the classic "An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem
and Modern Democracy", writing four of the lengthy
monographs on which the book was based. During the Second
World War, as America's foremost expert on the colonial
world, he worked in the United States Office of Strategic
Services until he moved in 1944 to the State Department,
where he was the first black official.
Bunche brought to his work at the United Nations the vitality,
integrity and spirit of a remarkable family, the intellect
of a scholar, the analytical mind and the experience of
a political scientist who had worked mostly in the field,
and the passion for justice and freedom of a member of an
oppressed minority. Throughout his years of success and
public acclaim, he remained, as he had always been, down-to-earth,
humorous, kind and unpretentious. As I said at his funeral:
"The grander he got, the nicer and more relaxed he
became."
Bunche was more concerned with achieving results than with
getting the credit for them, more interested in people than
in celebrities, and more moved by the struggles of the young,
the oppressed and the disadvantaged than by the caprices
and favours of the powerful and the famous. He was intensely
proud of being both American and black, but was strongly
critical of America's failures, especially in regard to
his own people. He was convinced that full integration into
the American society was the only valid objective-indeed
the only realistic option-for African Americans.
Bunche never wavered in his conviction that the United Nations
must, and could, be made to work. He probably did more than
anyone to give substance to this conviction. He detested
bigotry and injustice. He believed passionately in the independence
of the Secretariat, and strongly resisted improper pressure
from Governments, especially his own. By nature a kindly
man, he was ruthless with any hint of dishonesty, impropriety
or disloyalty to the United Nations. He was intolerant of
sloppy or superficial work. His powerful analytical mind
worked through and ahead of problems, and he instantly saw
through ingenious but unsound notions, slick ideas or devious
manoeuvres.
Bunche was a supremely responsible man. Regardless of fatigue
or inconvenience, he never gave up on a problem until he
was convinced that he had made every possible effort to
resolve it. He was usually the first to arrive and the last
to leave, and he insisted on being awakened for emergency
night calls. He accepted physical risk as a matter of course.
In the field, his courage and determination were an inspiration.
He greatly enjoyed, but only in the privacy of his own office,
the not infrequent comic or farcical aspects of the situations
and the people he dealt with.
Bunche disliked sanctimonious or misleading approaches to
life's problems. "May I speak a word or two against
brotherhood?", he said in one of his last interviews.
"Brotherhood is a misused, misleading term. We can
save the world with a lot less. … What we need in this
world is not brotherhood but coexistence. We need acceptance
of the right of every person to his own dignity. We need
mutual respect." He liked his fellow human beings.
He believed in them and devoted his life to helping them
to resolve their conflicts and their difficulties. When
he died in 1971, Secretary-General U Thant hailed him as
"an international institution in his own right".
The General Assembly stood for a minute of silence in his
honour.
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Brian Urquhart joined the United Nations Secretariat in 1945 after six years in the British army. He worked closely with the first five Secretaries-General, and with Ralph Bunche, on peace and security matters, and especially peacekeeping. He succeeded Ralph Bunche as Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs in 1972 and retired from the United Nations in 1986. From 1986 to 1996, he was Scholar-in-Residence in the international affairs programme at the Ford Foundation. His books include Hammarskjold, a biography of the second Secretary-General; Ralph Bunche: an American Odyssey; and a memoir, A Life in Peace and War.
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