Former Commonwealth Secretary-General, Sir Shridath Ramphal, has been awarded the 2002 Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development. Although The Indira Gandhi Memorial Trust made the announcement in New Delhi in April 2003, Sir Shridath was presented with the prize by the President of India Dr A P J Abdul Kalam on 19 November 2003 in the Indian capital.

The prestigious prize, regarded as the Indian “Nobel”, was instituted in 1985 and, over the years, it has been awarded to persons who have done outstanding work for international peace, disarmament and development.

Previous recipients include: the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and President of Ireland, Mary Robinson (2000), US President Jimmy Carter (1997), the President of the Czech Republic Dr Vaclav Havel (1993), Ms Gro Harlem Brundtland former Prime Minister of Norway and Chair of the World Commission on Environment and Development (1998), and Mikhail Gorbachev, then Leader of the Soviet Union (1987).

Sir Shridath, who was born in Guyana in 1928, is the 12th recipient of the prize. He is also the first Prize winner from the Caribbean.

Secretary-General of the Commonwealth from 1975 to 1990

As Secretary-General of the Commonwealth from 1975 to 1990 and in multifarious international fora, Sir Shridath has been an unapologetic advocate of Third World solidarity and an ardent supporter of the United Nations system while arguing always for its improvement.

Sir Shridath came to be at the centre of global efforts to resolve the long intractable problems of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by Rhodesia and of apartheid in South Africa -- “efforts which ultimately became a struggle for the ascendancy of human dignity over less worthy instincts,” he says. “The efforts to mobilise a global consensus for sanctions and achieve freedom in South Africa were of epic proportions. I have always counted it a particular privilege of my life to have had an opportunity to contribute in an intimate way to this great struggle and victory of the end years of the 20th century. The perspective from the centre of the Commonwealth needs and deserves to be set down.”

Ascendancy of principle

But there were other Commonwealth problems of large international import calling for that same ascendancy of principle, like General Idi Amin in Uganda or the US invasion of Grenada. Sir Shridath says, “There was, besides this political agenda, the ground-breaking work by the Commonwealth’s most eminent minds on issues that were later to be central to the global agenda like the Common Fund, the Debt Trap, making the North-South Dialogue Work, protectionism, the vulnerability of Small States, managing technological change, Towards a New Bretton Woods, climate change and sea-level rise -- all of this an effort by the Commonwealth’s 40 plus countries (at that time) to provide a basis for enlightened policy and action by the wider international community.”

In the 1980s, he served on each of the five independent international Commissions that reported on global issues - the Brandt Commission on International Development, the Palme Commission on Disarmament and Security Issues, the Brundtland Commission on Environment and Development, the Commission on Humanitarian Issues, and the South Commission. In 1995, he Co-Chaired the International Commission on Global Governance, with the then Prime Minister of Norway, Ingvar Carlsen.

Sir Shridath was also Chairman of the West Indian Commission whose report charted the course for the Caribbean’s development in 1992. He was the region’s Chief Negotiator in international economic negotiations, heading the Regional Negotiating Machinery (RNM) between 1997 and 2001 and has been Chancellor of the University of West Indies for 14 years.

Recently, Sir Shridath has been a Facilitator for Belize in the OAS process for a definitive resolution of the century-old dispute with Guatemala. It was in Belize, where he is now, that Sir Shridath received the news of the prize.

Immensely pleased and very humbled

Upon receiving the news that he would be awarded the prize, Sir Sridath said, “I am immensely pleased and very humbled at this great honour accorded to me by India in the name of a Leader with whom I worked closely as Commonwealth Secretary-General and for whom I had the greatest regard and affection.”

He is married and has four children – two daughters and two sons.