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Colum de Sales Murphy - Human Rights Leader, University President |
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 Colum Murphy is both diplomat and entrepreneur. A native of Ireland, he is the founder and president of the highly successful university, the Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations. He has more than 30 years experience with the United Nations - where he was a political officer with the Security Council, a human rights officer and a member of peacekeeping missions. As a senior UN official in Bosnia, where he spent a total of four years during and after the war, he was responsible for negotiating the Winter Ceasefire of 1994 and was the architect of the subsequent Cessation of Hostilities Agreement.
Click on this link to discover more about Colum Murphy
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“Health” a “Self-Evident” Right |
Speech of Colum Murphy at New York State University, Stony Brook, September 2007 : "This speech is about the essence of human rights, given in September 2007 by Colum
Murphy at the New York State University, along with French Minister of Foreign
Affairs Bernard Kouchner and the Director-General of the United Nations Office
at Geneva Sergei Ordzhonikidze."
Distinguished Hosts, Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am deeply grateful to you for your invitation to speak here today. Please accept my heartfelt thanks.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident” Thomas Jefferson wrote eloquently in the American Declaration of Independence - not “we believe these rights to be valuable, or useful, or desirable, but “self-evident”.
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A “NEW DEAL” FOR THE UNITED NATIONS - let’s try again! |
By Colum de Sales Murphy
The United Nations needs reform. And it
needs entrepreneurship. We need also to reform the international
political system. Finally, we need to reform human behaviour. Since,
realistically, the latter two are not about to be reformed anytime
soon, it is fitting - and urgent - that we look hard, again, at the
United Nations. It is the only institution of its kind. Anyway, it
ain’t going to go away, nor should it. It is, after all, family.
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UN REFORM : THE VIEW FROM SWITZERLAND |
By Colum de Sales Murphy
As a non-Swiss I am in no way qualified or mandated to speak of the
views of Switzerland. The view of UN Reform from Switzerland, however,
is illuminating.
Geneva is without doubt, as we like to say at our university, the most
diplomatic neighbourhood on the planet: no less than 190 international
organizations, government and non-governmental, in addition to the
diplomatic missions, are in Geneva. The heart of them, still in its
mostly fascist-era architecture, is the United Nations - now largely
housed in the old League of Nations buildings. Across the road from
where I live, in Bursinel, Churchill in 1946 wrote his United States of
Europe speech for delivery in Zurich. From this vantage point, it’s
easy to look backwards and forwards at the same time.
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Par Colum de Sales Murphy
« Pour accomplir de grandes choses, il faut rêver autant qu’agir ». Le très juste postulat d’Anatole France ne pourrait s’appliquer à une meilleure situation que celle de l’Organisation des Nations Unies. Celle-ci est née d’un rêve, celui d’hommes de bonne volonté qui s’étaient courageusement élevés contre le fléau de la guerre en lui opposant la voix des peuples, de tous les peuples. |
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Quotes
I read this gripping book through at one sitting. lt is a devastating, but also humane and poignant indictment of the failure of the great powers and the international community over Bosnia. Brilliant! — Brendan Simms, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge University. Author of Unfinest Hour : Britain and the Destruction of Bosnia.
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