Thanks to Ambassador Thomas Pickering for His Help to UNICEF throughout his Career : Kul Gautam

Ambassador Thomas Pickering


Distinguished Fellow - Foreign Policy

The Brookings Institutions



Dear Ambassador Pickering,



Most likely you would not remember me, but I met you once or twice with my boss Jim Grant, the Executive Director of UNICEF, when you were US Ambassador to the United Nations.



I just read and shared with my ex-UNICEF colleagues your inspiring interview on “How the US can get its multilateral groove back” with the UN Dispatch. We were all very touched by your wise and pragmatic reflections which we are sure will be helpful to the incoming Biden administration and to your distant successor as US Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.



Your reflections on how a skillful diplomat can turn challenges into opportunities by focusing on areas of common ground and shared interests even with one's adversaries and rivals, resonate well with all of us. And so do your observation of how you were able to "defang" the animosity of some ambassadors of countries that were not friendly to the US by focusing on some shared interests.



Many arrogant ambassadors of P-5 countries only hobnob with their counterparts from other big powers. But it is a mark of a truly successful and effective ambassadors like yourself to make friends with ambassadors of lesser powers who are respected by their fellow ambassadors for their intellect, creativity and problem-solving skills.



While the podcast of your interview was largely focused on the Security Council, I reminded my colleagues of how you also maintained genuine interest in the work of the rest of the UN, including the Funds and Programs like UNICEF.



I recall Jim Grant recounting with great nostalgia how he had reached out to you when you were US Ambassador to El Salvador to help persuade the powerful Salvadoran Army Chief to agree to the UNICEF-proposed "Days of Tranquility" to immunize children. Initially, the Salvadoran Army was opposed to any ceasefire saying the FMLN guerillas would simply take advantage of it, and even President Jose Napoleon Duarte had difficulty persuading the Army Generals. But my colleague and the then UNICEF Representative to El Salvador Agop Kayayan recalls with enormous gratitude to you how readily you kindly offered to call the General and persuaded him to support that life-saving mission for children.



Your delicate diplomatic intervention at that time had not only a decisive impact in ensuring the Days of Tranquility in El Salvador but it served as an example in many other countries in conflict around the world in the UN/UNICEF/WHO campaigns to immunize children, to eradicate polio and to promote child survival and wellbeing.



UNICEF chronicled this amazing event in a book by our former colleague Tarzie Vittachi entitled: "Between the Guns: Children as a Zone of Peace". Even as I write this message, our colleague Agop Kayayan is trying to prepare a documentary film on that experience in El Salvador entitled: “The Day Love Stopped a War”.





On behalf of my many ex-UNICEF colleagues, I want to take the occasion to thank you enormously for your commitment to multilateralism, your support for the UN and, especially, your decisive help for UNICEF in El Salvador. Thousands of Salvadoran children and millions elsewhere are alive and growing up as healthy and happy citizens thanks in part to your wise, timely and exemplary diplomatic help.



Wishing you Happy Holidays!



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Kul Chandra Gautam