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“Let us be honest and ask, at the outset, what it is that we wish to achieve? We have all been impotent in changing the past behaviour and human rights record in Iraq. Let us therefore redouble our efforts to make sure that we are not powerless now. Let us seek results. Let us make a difference a real difference for the people of Iraq. I cannot think of a more noble and worthy cause.” 

Sergio Vieira de Mello, the man who spoke these words—a man I knew and admired—died Tuesday in the bombing of the United Nations Headquarters in Iraq.  

Any death by violence is very sad, but the violent deaths of people who devoted their lives to helping others are truly tragic. 

The world lost more than human lives when that bomb went off Tuesday. The world lost people of passion and compassion, people who put lives of comfort and security aside to live and work in tense and dangerous situations to help others. 

Sergio Vieira de Mello was a human rights advocate who spent the past 30 years working for the United Nations, trying to solve the world’s most difficult humanitarian situations. I met him in the late 1980s when the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees was trying to deal with the forced repatriation of Vietnamese boat people from Hong Kong. I was the United Nations officer at Whitehead Detention Center in Hong Kong, a maximum security compound run by the Hong Kong Government, holding 24,000 Vietnamese who did not want to return to Vietnam under any circumstances. 

The U.N. had a mandate to protect the refugees, but the British and Hong Kong governments did not consider them to be political refugees, and refused to grant them asylum or permission to stay. 

The British plan was to take the Vietnamese, by force if necessary, load them onto airplanes in the middle of the night, and fly them back to Vietnam. The Vietnamese in Whitehead and the other detention centers in Hong Kong, were panicked, distraught, and began a series of desperate self-immolations and self-mutilations—sometimes resulting in death—in order to avoid being forcibly returned to Vietnam.  

It was an impossible, unwinnable human rights situation. 

As the head of the Asian Region for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sergio was the only diplomat who could help mediate the ugly situation. For those of us working in the detention centers, advocating for the Vietnamese, yet having to live with the horrifying violence, Sergio’s calm, compassionate diplomacy was the assurance we needed to keep on working. 

The United Nations did not win, and by 1997, when Britain handed Hong Kong back to Chinese rule, all the Vietnamese had been sent back to Vietnam. 

Equally horrified at the situation of housing refugees in maximum security detention centers was a New York attorney, Arthur Helton, who came to Hong Kong in the late 1980s to write about the plight of the Vietnamese, and to advocate for more humanitarian policies. 

I met with Arthur several times, as he urged me to document the human rights violations I witnessed every day. He was a mentor and teacher as I prepared my first report on the subject of arbitrary detention of refugees for the United Nations. 

Arthur never stopped pushing for more effective responses to humanitarian crises, particularly those involving refugees and displaced people. He was representing the Council on Foreign Relations and was scheduled to discuss the humanitarian situation in Iraq with Sergio in his office at the United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad at 4:30 p.m.—the time the bomb went off. 

Sergio and Arthur, and the others who died with them, were extraordinary people. Working in the field, in places of great humanitarian need, is a calling to which many may aspire, but few can handle. Living outside one’s country is not easy, but living and working in a situation of personal danger, physical hardship, and extreme emotional stress is very difficult. 

Sergio was one of those unique United Nations employees who spent the majority of his 30 years in the field. From Cambodia to Kosovo to East Timor, Sergio was a tireless advocate for human rights. In September of 2002 his exemplary career was acknowledged with his appointment as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. He was Kofi Annan’s choice to represent the United Nations in the difficult situation in Iraq, even if it meant taking a leave of absence from his post as High Commissioner in Geneva. 

Sergio was not a supporter of the invasion of Iraq by the United States, but the United Nations had to be there to assist in the reconstruction, and to advocate for the Iraqi people’s human rights. And Arthur came to Baghdad to assess the scope of the humanitarian needs, to determine what could be done to foster justice and human rights. The deaths of Sergio and Arthur are tragedies, but they died for the noble cause they pursued so passionately.  

Let us now redouble our efforts for peace and human rights, as Sergio asked. 

Anne Wagley worked in refugee and humanitarian relief in Asia for ten years before moving to Berkeley. She works for the Berkeley Daily Planet.