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About Colum de Sales Murphy |
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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.
Murphy’s book “Aza Beast”: attacking the Roots of War - A Bosnian War Journal, won wide acclaim. Reviewing the book in Foreign Affairs (Jan.Feb. 2005), Harvard’s Professor Stanley Hoffmann wrote: “As a UN official in Bosnia, Murphy carried out his mission with distinction, but his analysis of, and intense feelings about, the Bosnian war put him at odds with the UN, with its strict impartiality between the Serbs and their victims from 1991 to 1995. This memoir is valuable both as a portrait of a deeply moral man in an awful situation and as an account of the sufferings of the Bosnians …… Murphy’s sense of right and wrong, his distaste for “realist” justifications of inaction, and his concern for the victims of the beast of war give this volume its glow and its emotional power”. Noel Malcolm, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, wrote “this is a deeply humane book by someone who has not been afraid (unlike some of his colleagues at the time) to distinguish clearly between good and evil”. Brendan Simms, Fellow of Peterhouse, Cambridge University, called Murphy’s war journal “Brilliant!”.
Murphy is committed to the role of the UN Security Council, in which he is considered expert. Over several decades he has worked with almost every issue before the Council and the UN in general, from disarmament to problems of globalization. He has also written widely on peacekeeping matters and on human rights, about which he is passionate.
Known both for his total commitment to the principles of the United Nations and for his creative management skills, Murphy was awarded an honorary doctorate in management studies in Switzerland in 1996. He took his Bachelor’s degree in Economics from University College Dublin and completed his Master’s and Doctorate degree work in International Relations from, respectively, Harvard University and the University of Geneva. Professor Murphy now teaches university courses on “The Roots of War and Peace”, “Human Rights in the Future”, “Macro-Economics in the 20th and 21st Centuries”, and “Surviving the 21st Century”.
Colum Murphy lives in Switzerland where he likes to ski and play tennis. He is well known for his popular and fine sense of humour. He confesses, however, to a far-sighted disquiet as to the development of international relations in the 21st century. He believes strongly in UN reform and evolution.
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