Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy - Tufts University

“Whatever the UN’s shortcomings,no other body can match the experience, expertise,and legitimacy the UN is able to muster.”Shashi Tharoor PhD F 78I began my career with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva in 1978,and in 1981 was sent out to head UNHCR’s office in Singapore during the peak of theVietnamese boat-people crisis. It was my job to get the refugees into camps, negotiatetheir acceptance by other countries for resettlement, and get them off to new lives. Itwas amazingly fulfilling to know that I had made a concrete difference to real humanbeings—not figures on a piece of paper, but people I could actually see around me.After 11 years with UNHCR, I moved over to the UN’s Department ofPeacekeeping and eventually led the team handling the UN’s peacekeeping effortsin the former Yugoslavia. The norms of peacekeeping were being shaped through theprocess of coping with challenges as they emerged, so we made a lot up as we wentalong. It was exhilarating in a certain way, and exhausting and frustrating in others.But it was satisfying to know that, during that great human cataclysm, I was a smallcog in a very big machine trying to prevent, or at least mitigate, that cataclysm.In my former role as under-secretary-general for communications and publicinformation, my job was to promote the understanding of and support for the UN’srole in development, the environment, public health—a whole range of issues andinitiatives. And whatever the organization’s shortcomings, when it comes to dealingwith these kinds of transnational issues, no other body can match the experience,expertise, and legitimacy the UN is able to muster.So as you can see, my career has required me to know a little bit about everything.The breadth and rigor of my class work at Fletcher has served me very well.Shashi Tharoor PhD ’78 is a member of the Indian Parliament and the former Indian Minister of State for External Affairs. From June 2002to February 2007 he served as the UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information. In addition, Shashi Tharoor isthe author of eleven award-winning books, as well as numerous articles, poems, short stories, and commentaries in such Indian and Westernpublications as The Weekly Hindu, Newsweek International, and the International Herald Tribune.(28)