On 24 October, at a ceremony to mark UN Day, UNA-UK presented this year’s Sir Brian Urquhart Award for Distinguished Service to the UN to Sir Charles Petrie, former Senior UN Official and human rights expert. See the video below to watch acceptance his speech.

Among other things he said: “We are in a world today where multilateralism is under serious threat. One of the greatest concerns has to be the perversion and rejection of a rules based international system. We are seeing the re-emergence of a particularly cynical, opportunistic, almost Darwinian, form of world order.”

Sir Charles James Petrie, 6th Baronet OBE, is a former Assistant Secretary-General of the United Nations , Former UN Resident Coordinator for Myanmar and Head of UNSG’s Internal Review Panel for the UN in Sri Lanka. In August 2021, Petrie published a book with Unbound publishing entitled “The Triumph of Evil: The Rwanda Genocide and the Search for Justice”. Read an interview with him on Global Weekly.