Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World (60 page)
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Authors: Samantha Power
BOOK: Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the Fight to Save the World
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The only times Vieira de Mello tensed up on the trip were the rare occasions when he telephoned UN Headquarters to try to determine where he was headed next. “I’m going to call the boss next Monday,” he would tell Larriera on a Wednesday. Then on the Friday, he would wake up and say, “Remember, I’m calling the SG on Monday.” And when Monday rolled around, he would spend the day mentally preparing for his conversation with Annan. “I never saw Sergio nervous,” recalls Larriera, “except for when he was speaking with the SG, or thinking about speaking with him.” She would tease him,“Are you biting your fingernails?” “No,” he would reply.“I’m biting my cuticles.There’s a big difference!” Even though he had known Annan for two decades, he respected the office of the secretary-general so much that he spoke to Annan as formally as he might have to a stranger in the position, never calling him “Kofi” but only “SG.”
The couple returned to New York in late July. Larriera reclaimed the UN public information job she had held before East Timor and studied for the GRE so that she could apply to graduate programs in public policy. Vieira de Mello awaited word of his fortune, joking to friends that he was “unemployed” and intended to live off of Larriera. Annan finally decided to offer him the Geneva-based job of UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. Since he was not ready to go back to the field to run another mission so soon, and since there were few alternatives, he felt he had no choice but to accept. On July 22, 2002, the secretary-general announced his appointment. Vieira de Mello had won out over a long list of candidates that included Corazon Aquino, the former president of the Philippines; Surin Pitsuwan, the former Thai foreign minister; and Bronislaw Geremek, the Polish dissident.
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1
Vieira de Mello’s predecessor in the job was former Irish president Mary Robinson. Robinson had been outspoken in her criticisms of the Bush administration’s human rights abuses in the wake of 9/11. She had slammed President Bush’s decision to withhold prisoner-of-war status and Geneva Convention protections from al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees housed in Guantánamo and elsewhere.
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And she had called on the United States to increase the percentage of its GNP devoted to foreign aid, which had fallen from 0.21 percent in 1990 to 0.10 percent in 1999. Although the United States was the UN’s biggest single donor, she had alienated U.S. officials by observing that while each Dane was coughing up $331 per year on aid, each American was giving only $33.
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Unsurprisingly, the United States refused to support her bid for a second four-year term as high commissioner. Still, she was unrepentant. “Holding back criticism, for whatever political reasons,” she said, “takes away the legitimacy of the agenda and the cause.”
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2
And she had called on the United States to increase the percentage of its GNP devoted to foreign aid, which had fallen from 0.21 percent in 1990 to 0.10 percent in 1999. Although the United States was the UN’s biggest single donor, she had alienated U.S. officials by observing that while each Dane was coughing up $331 per year on aid, each American was giving only $33.
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Unsurprisingly, the United States refused to support her bid for a second four-year term as high commissioner. Still, she was unrepentant. “Holding back criticism, for whatever political reasons,” she said, “takes away the legitimacy of the agenda and the cause.”
4
Although Vieira de Mello had dealt with human suffering and humanitarian law for his entire career, he never saw himself as a “human rights type.” He saw human rights advocates as those who named and shamed governments. He saw his strength as working with governments behind the scenes to secure consensus. He did not feel temperamentally suited for a job that required more bluntness than any other in the UN system. But after Robinson, Annan felt that Vieira de Mello’s very unsuitability for the human rights commissioner’s job made him an ideal candidate to smooth out relations with the United States.
Western diplomats hailed the choice, but human rights groups sounded displeased. Michael Posner, head of the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, wondered whether the new commissioner would confront the Russians on Chechnya, or the United States on its post-9/11 detentions. “It requires a very strong backbone,” Posner said. “Mary Robinson had that.”
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“My concern,” recalls Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, “was that Sergio had no record of using public pressure.” Roth and others were willing to give him a chance, but they believed his personal ambition would make him reluctant to alienate governments. “Ideally, you’d get somebody who saw becoming high commissioner as the pinnacle of their career, not as a stepping-stone to higher ground, to becoming secretary-general,” says Roth.
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“My concern,” recalls Ken Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, “was that Sergio had no record of using public pressure.” Roth and others were willing to give him a chance, but they believed his personal ambition would make him reluctant to alienate governments. “Ideally, you’d get somebody who saw becoming high commissioner as the pinnacle of their career, not as a stepping-stone to higher ground, to becoming secretary-general,” says Roth.
Naturally, the more senior Vieira de Mello became, the more people were convinced that he was angling for the top job. That summer Prince Zeid Raad Zeid al-Hussein, Jordan’s ambassador to the UN, told him that the other ambassadors had begun speaking of him as a serious contender to succeed Annan in 2006. Vieira de Mello waved him off, referring to the tradition by which the position of secretary-general rotated among regional blocs.“Latin America has had its turn,” he said. Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, a Peruvian, had given way to Boutros Boutros-Ghali, an Egyptian, who had been replaced by Annan of Ghana. In 2006 it would be Asia’s turn in the queue. “But, Sergio,” Zeid said playfully, “after all you did for East Timor, don’t tell me they haven’t made you a citizen.You can be Asia’s candidate.”
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The raw ambition of his youth seemed to have receded. Partly this was because after spending thirty-three years in the system, he knew too much about its flaws—flaws that would only loom larger if he were to hold the top job. Less than a week before he was to fly to Geneva to take up his new post, he met Larriera in the UN lobby, and the couple walked several blocks up First Avenue together. Suddenly a motorcade belonging to Annan came tearing out of the gates of UN Headquarters. “Do you want to become secretary-general?” she asked. He shrugged. “Carolina, if I were to become secretary-general, there’d be no more Sergio, and no more Sergio and Carolina.” He took her hand as they crossed East Forty-eighth Street. “There’d be only that,” he said, nodding in the direction of the UN gates as they closed behind the last vehicle in the convoy. As they walked uptown, he explained his ambivalence. “When the SG took office, he had a vision, an ambitious reform agenda,” he said. “And what became of it? The job of SG took over. The job will always take over. Now there is no more Kofi. No more vision. He is just the SG. And that’s what would happen to me.” Whatever the drawbacks of becoming secretary-general, though, he had never met a challenge he didn’t embrace, and if powerful governments had put his name forward, it seems inconceivable that he would have taken himself out of the running.
He did not see becoming UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as a great career move. Although it was the most senior post he had ever held, it carried little prestige, relative to other jobs he had been eligible for, and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) had one of the smallest overall budgets of any UN agency ($66 million). It carried out few operations in the field, where he was in his element. Its commissioner would inevitably be attacked, either by governments (if he was critical of them) or by human rights groups (if he was not). And in its decade of existence, the OHCHR had managed to exert scant real-world influence. Powerful governments held it in low regard.
His colleagues in the UN had told him that the ideal high commissioner would combine the skills of a politician, a bureaucrat, and a human rights expert. He was none of these things. He had no independent political base, no patience for bureaucracy, and little human rights background. After the press conference at which Annan announced his appointment,Vieira de Mello rode the elevator up to the twenty-second floor, where he was sharing a borrowed office with Prentice, closed the door behind him, and said, “Now what the hell do I do?” The first thing he did was walk with his aide to the Barnes & Noble near New York University and begin piling up books on the theory and practice of human rights. “Did he ever think he would be the high commissioner for human rights?” says Prentice. “No, not in a month of Sundays.”
Worn out from the long slog in East Timor, Vieira de Mello and Larriera spent the remainder of the summer in Larriera’s studio flat in New York. She worked on the weekends as a volunteer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he picked her up after work. Because UN Headquarters was largely deserted in August, he felt little pressure to make appearances on the diplomatic cocktail circuit.
Whatever headaches lay ahead, Vieira de Mello was relieved to be back in Western civilization after nearly three years in the most remote reaches of Southeast Asia. He was also determined not to let his new job get in the way of his personal life, which had become a priority. He told his friends that, although his divorce proceedings were taking time, he would soon put an end to what he called
“l’hypocrisie du passé,”
the hypocrisy of the past—of his past. Annan had been through a messy divorce two decades before and cautioned, “Be patient and do it right. Once you are living apart, there is no need to force it. For the sake of the children, do it on a civilized basis.” Vieira de Mello told Annan that he was glad to be moving back to Geneva so he could finally be near his sons. “It was sort of a guilty feeling,” Annan recalls.
“l’hypocrisie du passé,”
the hypocrisy of the past—of his past. Annan had been through a messy divorce two decades before and cautioned, “Be patient and do it right. Once you are living apart, there is no need to force it. For the sake of the children, do it on a civilized basis.” Vieira de Mello told Annan that he was glad to be moving back to Geneva so he could finally be near his sons. “It was sort of a guilty feeling,” Annan recalls.
Vieira de Mello was boyishly proud of his relationship with Larriera. While in New York, he introduced her to his friend Omar Bakhet. When she got up to go to the restroom, he watched her walk away and said,“I’m totally in love.” Bakhet reacted with initial skepticism, as did other friends. “Do you have any idea how many times you’ve told me this?” he asked. But Vieira de Mello was insistent. “You have to listen to me,” he said. “I’ve had enough of breaking people’s hearts. It’s time to get serious about these matters.” His friend Fabienne Morisset remembers,“Sergio had tired of the contradictions in himself. In his professional life he was working around the clock to try to reduce suffering in the world. Yet in his personal life he knew he had caused pain. He was determined to reconcile both halves of his being.”
On September 11, 2002, Vieira de Mello cleared passport control at JFK International Airport. He was on his way to Geneva, where he would finally start his new job. He stopped at an Internet kiosk to mark the dawn of the next stage of his life with Larriera—a life, he wrote to her, “with so many and such dangerous unknowns, where I await for you to accompany me.” He thanked her for her support at a time when “I myself know that I haven’t been easy to manage,” and he promised her reciprocal support in the days ahead.
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Larriera was planning to move to Geneva in the spring, when she would take up a job with Martin Griffiths, who had left the UN to run a conflict resolution center in Geneva. She also gained admission to a distance-learning master’s degree program tailored for UN officials at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Boston, which she was to begin the following August. Vieira de Mello found it hard to be separated from her. On September 13 he e-mailed her his home, cell, and work phone numbers and instructed her to keep them with her at all times, and even to “hide them in Central Park, in case you get an irrepressible urge to call me while you are running.”
7
The same day he wrote to Marcia Luar Ibrahim, the wife of his former bodyguard in East Timor, that he was lonely because
“Não sei mais viver sem a Carolina. ”
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He no longer knew how to live without Carolina.
7
The same day he wrote to Marcia Luar Ibrahim, the wife of his former bodyguard in East Timor, that he was lonely because
“Não sei mais viver sem a Carolina. ”
8
He no longer knew how to live without Carolina.
He rented a tiny one-bedroom apartment in the old town in Geneva, promising Larriera that once she moved to Europe they would splurge on a house somewhere around Lake Geneva. The first time she stuck her head out the window of their temporary quarters, she spotted a plaque on the building diagonal from theirs. It was the former home of Jorge Luis Borges, her favorite writer, who was also from Buenos Aires. On a run one day they then stumbled upon a small walled park tucked into downtown Geneva. It proved to be a cemetery for the town’s most prized citizens.The couple entered and found Borges’s understated grave, which was so elegant that they returned to take photos of it.
The couple settled into a range of habits to keep them connected despite the four thousand miles that separated them during the week. They shopped online together at Ikea—he from Geneva, she from New York. They declined invitations to go out in the evenings. He told colleagues, “I am not a dinner person,” and asked them to accommodate him at lunchtime. Larriera gave him wake-up calls at 1 a.m. New York time, and he did the same, calling her at 1 p.m. Geneva time. They tried to see each other every weekend, with him flying to New York and she to Geneva twice a month. When her mother was diagnosed with kidney cancer, he flew twenty-one hours to Buenos Aires so he could spend the day of the surgery by Larriera’s side.The couple generally spoke Spanish together, as his was flawless and she was still mastering Portuguese. But whenever he talked about his feelings for her or about their future, he drifted unselfconsciously into Portuguese. As he had gotten older, he had grown more proudly Brazilian. He ostentatiously checked the manufacturers’ labels in shops to see if items were “made in Brazil”; he affixed a bumper sticker of the Brazilian flag to his car in Geneva; and he donned gold and green T-shirts with Brazilian football logos. When he recycled UN paper, he explained it by saying, “These are the trees from my Amazon we are printing on.” His relationship with Larriera caused these habits to grow more pronounced, as he told others she had reawakened his roots.
When the couple reached the one-year anniversary of the launch of “history,” he marked it with another e-mail to thank her “for standing me for a year” and to express hope that “for the rest of my life it will be like this.”
9
Ever since “history” had begun the previous October, he had referred to her in public as “my wife Carolina,” and over the summer they had begun wearing gold rings made at Tiffany’s. His had the name “Carolina” engraved on the inside, and her matching ring bore the name “Sergio.”
9
Ever since “history” had begun the previous October, he had referred to her in public as “my wife Carolina,” and over the summer they had begun wearing gold rings made at Tiffany’s. His had the name “Carolina” engraved on the inside, and her matching ring bore the name “Sergio.”
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