Lakhdar Brahimi, Doctor Honoris Causa

At 82, Lakhdar Brahimi has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Sciences Po after an outstanding career in international relations. We spoke to this skillful and reserved diplomat.
 
“It had never occurred to me to make this my career. It was a whole chain of events that meant I found myself in diplomacy, without having prepared myself or having done anything to get there.” In 1954, the 20-year-old Algerian was interested in international relations but had no real diplomatic calling. He decided to represent the National Liberation Front in Indonesia as an alternative to haunting lecture theatres and racking up university degrees.
 
There, the young man witnessed international relations undiluted, from the centre of the non-aligned movement. They were “great moments of change,” which inspire him to this day. “I was somewhat atypical. I wore sandals and no tie. I spent time in cafés. I was closer to journalists and intellectuals,” the former diplomat recalls.
 
The son of a civil servant, Brahimi never dreamed he would become a UN special representative tasked with pacifying the most pressing conflicts, from South Africa to Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Zaire and Syria. And even less of treading the same boards as the history-makers of the second half of the twentieth century: Sukarno, Nehru, Tito, Nacer, Mandela, Carter and Annan. “Interesting experiences,” Brahimi says softly with a faint, gap-toothed smile.

• “He is a diplomat of old-school reserve” 

“It’s quite astounding to hear him talk about his one-on-one meetings with the legendary figures of history as if it were any other anecdote,” said Maud Koenig O’Carroll, one of his students at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po (PSIA). “Part of the charm is how he dwells on small details that you might think insignificant, but which really bring the story to life.” Brahimi recounts this past very calmly, taking great care to provide all the background before delving into memories. With never a word too many.
 
Very quickly, Brahimi shifts the focus of his account from himself to other people.  When asked about his first visit to the United Nations in 1961, the man who became a UN Under-Secretary-General in 2004 replies simply: “It was extraordinary.” Brahimi then hastens to describe the talents of Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary General at the time.
 
So, no way of knowing what was going through his mind as he walked through the glass tower for the first time. “He is a diplomat of old-school reserve and of a generation that doesn’t proffer personal observations every five minutes,” remarked Ghassan Salamé, who has known him for over 30 years.

• “He is not after individual success”

“He is not after individual success. He is a good soldier of the UN, which people tend to forget,” said the former Lebanese minister. A good soldier who has long stood out in the diplomatic sphere for his patience and moral authority, according to Enrico Letta, Dean of PSIA where Brahimi has taught since 2010. The former Italian prime minister met Brahimi “right at the most horrific moment of the war in Syria,” at a G20 meeting in St. Petersburg in 2013.
 
Brahimi was serving as UN special representative to Syria, following the resignation of his predecessor Kofi Annan. “He was completely unfazed that morning, although we had only had three hours’ sleep. We were all ghosts,” Letta recalled. “I would have preferred them not to ask me to take on that mission,” Brahimi confides. “But when you agree to do a job like that, you don’t go because it’s easy and you think the world will applaud you. You do it because you must, it’s a duty.”
 
When asked what mission he is most proud of, the octogenarian does not have to think for long. “The one that brought me the most happiness ... in fact the only one that brought me happiness, was South Africa in 1994,” when Nelson Mandela triumphed in the country’s first free and democratic elections. “We were dealing with leaders of a very, very high calibre. Mandela and De Klerk. They are the ones who did the work, it wasn’t us,” insists Brahimi. For him, it was a near-perfect crisis resolution, where “those who were killing each other finally say ‘no that’s enough, we are going to solve the problem,’ and you help them do so”.
 
To characterise the United Nations he knows practically by heart, Brahimi volunteers a quip from General De Gaulle: “A thing, which belongs to its members”. A thing that can be used for the worst as well as for the best, and whose shortcomings he analysed in a report in 2000 that bears his name.
 
At 82, the man who started diplomacy in sandals has finally distanced himself from it, while continuing to teach and lecture. “The best medicine for old age is work,” he declares with a smile.

Laura Wojcik (Fr)

Lakhdar Brahimi was awarded an honorary doctorate on Wednesday, January 27, 2016. The keynote address was given by Ghassan Salamé, emeritus professor at Sciences Po.
Lakhdar Brahimi is a Distinguished Professor of Practice at the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po, where he has taught a course on conflict resolution since 2010.