Background
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar was born on January 19, 1920 in Lima.
Diplomat Secretary-General lawyer
Javier Pérez de Cuéllar was born on January 19, 1920 in Lima.
He studied in Colegio San Agustín of Lima, and then at Pontifical Catholic University of Peru.
Born in Lima, Javier Felipe Ricardo Pérez de Cuéllar Guerra began his diplomatic career in 1943. He was Peru's ambassador to Switzerland (1964 - 1966), the Soviet Union and Poland (1969 - 1971), and Venezuela (1977 - 1979). As head of the Peruvian UN delegation (1971 - 1975), he was president of the Security Council during the 1974 Cyprus crisis. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim named him special representative to Cyprus (1975 - 1977) and, in 1979, undersecretary-general for special political affairs. He resigned in 1981, but remained special representative to Afghanistan. Pérez de Cuéllar was a compromise choice for secretary-general following a six-week deadlock between those (including the United States and the Soviet Union) who supported the reelection of Waldheim and those who supported Salim A. Salim of Tanzania. He was reelected to a second term, without controversy, in 1986. Pérez de Cuéllar spoke out boldly to deplore the shrinking influence of the United Nations. Security Council impotence, he warned, was producing a slide toward international anarchy. His efforts to mediate the British-Argentine war in the Falklands in 1982, though unsuccessful, won widespread respect, and other personal initiatives followed--on Afghanistan, Namibia, and the Guyana/Venezuela border dispute. Refugee resettlement and human rights were other top priorities.
Quotations:
"Peace - the word evokes the simplest and most cherished dream of humanity. Peace is, and has always been, the ultimate human aspiration. And yet our history overwhelmingly shows that while we speak incessantly of peace, our actions tell a very different story. "
"The aim of political institutions like the United Nations is to draw the line between struggle and conflict and to make it possible for nations to stay on the right side of that line. .. "
"I am like a doctor. I have written a prescription to help the patient. If the patient doesn't want all the pills I've recommended, that's up to him. But I must warn that next time I will have to come as a surgeon with a knife. "
"Human nature being what it is, peace must inevitably be a relative condition. The essence of life is struggle and competition, and to that extent perfect peace is an almost meaningless abstraction. Struggle and competition are stimulating, but when they degenerate into conflict it is usually both destructive and disruptive. The aim of political institutions like the United Nations is to draw the line between struggle and conflict and to make it possible for nations to stay on the right side of that line. .. "
"I am a free man. I feel as light as a feather. "
He is a member of The Inter-American Dialogue (a U. S. based center for policy analysis, exchange, and communication on issues in Western Hemisphere affairs based in Washington, D. C. ).
He married his first wife in France. From his first marriage, he has a son, Francisco and a daughter, Agueda Cristina.
During his time in Cyprus, Mr. Perez de Cuellar married his second wife, the former Marcela Temple Seminario, with whom he had no children.