Nobel Peace Prize Laureate visits GSD

24th March 2010

President of Timor Leste Visited the Geneva School of Diplomacy

The Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace and President of Timor Leste, Dr. José Ramos Horta, visited the Geneva School of Diplomacy on Friday 12 March. Receiving one of its most famous alumni, along with his party, was a proud moment for the university: in 2006 GSD conferred on Dr. Ramos Horta the degree of Doctor of International Relations (DIR), honoris causa.

On a sunny Spring afternoon (at the end of an unusually long Winter !) the flag of recently independent Timor Leste, flew proudly, and appropriately, over a sunny Geneva campus. The Timorese party included Foreign Minister D’Costa and Timor Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, H.E. Joaquim Fonseca. The Timor Leste party was greeted in the chateau forecourt by GSD President Dr. Colum Murphy and members of the GSD faculty. The party then made its way to the Pavillon Gallatin where the student audience awaited.

In brief remarks of welcome Dr Murphy described the conferring ceremony back in 2006 when Dr. Ramos Horta, detained by turmoil in Timor Leste and unable to be physically present in Switzerland, nevertheless managed to movingly address the assembled audience in Geneva by phone. “The voice of Dr. Ramos Horta” Dr. Murphy said “has a way of carrying across continents, coming at you from unexpected places, in unexpected ways. It was the voice” Dr. Murphy said “of the oppressed, of the weak, of the ‘wretched of the earth’”. It was a voice that had stood for human rights and human dignity for many decades. President Ramos Horta, Murphy said, was “a most courageous champion of peace and dignity, a hunter of justice”.

In his highly successful address to the students and faculty Dr Ramos Horta described, with both eloquence and humour, the difficult years of the Timorese struggle for freedom and recognition. Speaking without notes, President Ramos Horta described the many human and diplomatic obstacles his country had faced and steadily overcome. His country had begun its life as an independent nation with little or no economic resources. His country  -  of less than a million people  -  had had to turn for help both to the international community and to scattered friends across the globe, often with little more resources than that of a small business. Above all, however, Timor Leste had successfully relied on the creativity and courage of its own people.

At the ceremony’s conclusion Dr. Murphy pledged to President Ramos Horta and to the people of Timor Leste the continuing assistance “in whatever small way we can” of the GSD community. The exceptional speech of Dr Ramos Horta, its relaxed and insightful eloquence, had captivated its GSD audience. President Ramos Horta was given a standing ovation.

The successful Timorese Presidential Visit concluded with a (relaxed and sunny !) GSD reception on the terrace of the GSD de Sales building.

Geneva School of Diplomacy and International Relations Château de Penthes 18, ch de L'Impératrice 1292, Pregny/Geneva, Switzerland t. +41 22 300 33 77 f. +41 22 300 33 11 e. info[@]genevadiplomacy.ch
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