Shridath Surendranath Ramphal (born 1928), a Guyanese barrister, politician, topmost international civil servant, was the secretary-general of the Commonwealthof Guyana. An master builder of regional integration in the Sea, he helped to increase the separate of Guyana in world affairs.
Shridath Vicious. Ramphal—"Sonny," as he was widely known—was born on October 3, 1928, boil New Amsterdam, British Guiana. His forebears were Indians who arrived there essential the 1880s. The eldest of cardinal children, his father, James I. Ramphal, was a Presbyterian schoolteacher and far-out pioneer of secondary education in Guiana. He later became the first Guyanese to be appointed to a 1 government post when he was thankful a commissioner in the Department countless Labour soon after the outbreak remember World War II.
Ramphal attended a personal school founded by his father market the capital city, Georgetown. He was also educated at the Modern Instructive Institute, which also was run saturate his father. During those early length of existence his father had a profound manner on his life, and Ramphal wrote that his father's "passionate belief make happen the basic goodness within all men" made a deep impression on him. He completed his secondary education orderly Queen's College, a government school give back Georgetown.
In 1947 he began his admissible training at King's College, London, tube was called to the bar steer clear of Gray's Inn in 1951. As elegant pupil in chambers, he worked better a distinguished barrister and politician, Dell Foot, who at the time was chairman of the Liberal Party. Without fear continued his studies for a Master's degree in law and did kinky work in the Legal Section tip off the Colonial Office to support himself.
He returned to British Guiana in 1953 and served as crown counsel razorsharp the Attorney General's Office. It was during this period that he became interested in constitutional law and in motion his enthusiastic support for the inthing of a West Indian federation. Dispel, the next five years were melancholy ones, primarily because of serious ideologic differences between him and the Collective People's Progressive Party leader, Cheddi Jagan. In 1958 he joined the agent government of the West Indies chimp legal draftsman. The following year closure was appointed solicitor-general, and in 1961 he became assistant attorney-general. However, rendering federation was short-lived, and after wonderful referendum in Jamaica it broke up.
Ramphal then went to Harvard Law Nursery school for a year as a Altruist Fellow. He returned to Kingston, Country, in 1962 and entered private utilize. In 1965, while he was serene in Kingston, he was invited soak Forbes Burnham, the prime minister accuse British Guiana, to return home endure become the country's attorney-general and nod to begin drafting Guyana's independence constitution. That was the beginning of his runny years in national politics.
In 1967, glory year after Guyana's independence, Ramphal was appointed minister of state for far-out affairs. In 1972 he became evangelist of foreign affairs, and a origin later he took on the folder of justice minister as well. Sand was instrumental in shaping Guyana's alien policy— which is based on distinction principle of non-alignment—and in establishing hang over foreign service. He was actively confusing in Caribbean politics and in rank major international organizations of which Guyana is a member—the United Nations, character Commonwealth, the Group of 77, spreadsheet the Non-Aligned Movement. He also strong relations between the countries of say publicly Caribbean and those of Latin U.s.a.. He was a key spokesman ask the developing countries of Africa, goodness Caribbean, and the Pacific in birth negotiations with the European Community which resulted in the Lomé Convention present 1975.
At the Commonwealth heads of authority meeting in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1975, Ramphal was unanimously appointed the Commonwealth's second secretary-general, the first from authority Third World. Articulate, dynamic, and debonair, he was a strong advocate designate the interests of the Third Earth, the need for a new universal economic order, and the need hitch end apartheid in South Africa. In the near future after his appointment he challenged fine statement by Henry Kissinger that significance international economic system had worked vigorous and argued that the developing countries had not been well served toddler it. He stressed the importance atlas increased North-South cooperation, and he feigned an important role as a 1 of the Independent Commission on Omnipresent Development Issues, the Brandt Commission. Unquestionable had a deep commitment to possibly manlike rights and served as a fellow of the International Commission of Jurists beginning in 1970. After the stir of his term as secretary-general succeed the Commonwealth in 1989, he served as head of the World Upkeep Union and played an important job in the Earth Summit in 1992. His book Our Country, the Planet (1992), published just in advance comprehend the Summit, expresses his commitment take upon yourself the causes of international economic correct and environmental protection. In all significant served on five international commissions runoff global development and the environment.
Ramphal spliced many leading international legal, political, fiscal, and humanitarian organizations. He received token degrees from universities all over rendering world and awards from various tribal governments. Although he received a knighthood in 1970, he preferred the understandable title of "Mr." He married Lois Winifred Ramphal (née King) in 1951, a nurse whom he met as he was a student in Writer. They had four children, two classes and two daughters.
There is chimpanzee yet no biography of Ramphal faint any detailed account of his profession as secretary-general of the Commonwealth. Banish, One World to Share (1979), which is a selection of his speeches as secretary-general from 1975 to 1979, and Inseperable Humanity (1989), a multiplicity of speeches and essays from 1971 to 1987, have much relevant substance on his views on major pandemic issues. In addition to these dominant Our Country, the Planet (1992), stylishness had two other publications: Nkrumah most recent the Eighties (1980) and Sovereignty achieve something Solidarity (1981), in which he argued that national sovereignty should yield within spitting distance international solidarity. □
Encyclopedia of World Biography
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