Kuna Press Agency, 17 August 2004
UN/Aid Workers/Commemoration
A new book on Sergio vieira de Mello two days ahead
Geneva, August 17 (KUNA) – A new book appeared today on Sergio Vieira de Mello, two days ahead of the August 19 th first anniversary of the bombing of the UN headquarters in Iraq.
Vieira de Mello was the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Specail Representative of the Secretary-General in Iraq up to August 19, 2003 where he was brutally killed with others when a terrorist attack targeted the UN by a sucide car bomb.
Many Iraqis died that day in the attack as well as several Arabs who worked for the UN, as well as a spectrum of other nationalities.
The book titled: Sergio Vieira de Mello, An exceptional man has been produced by two people who new the man very well, Annick Stevenson and George Gordon-Lennox.
Both authors say in their introduction that the book is dedicated to all those who have sacrificed their lives to advance the cause of of peace and human rights in six decades of action by the United Nations.
The book is also dedicated to the children of today and tomorrow.
Stevenson told reporters during the launching of the book that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will establish a fund in Vieira de Mello's name and the donations to that fund would go to the children of Iraq.
United Nations Assistant High Commissioner for Refugees Kamal Morjan, Sergio's long standing colleague noted in the book's preface that the best way of paying homage to him is to continue the struggle for the only cause that truly motivated him and to which he is today a martyr: the creation of a more just and tolerant world.