Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi yesterday described how Arvid Pardo came to be made Malta’s representative at the United Nations after independence, and his role in initiating the debate at the General Assembly which eventually led to the UN Law of the Sea.

Dr Gonzi was speaking at the unveiling of a monument in honour of Dr Pardo at the International Maritime Law Institute of the University of Malta in Msida.

“It happens in history,” he started by saying, “that sometimes persons with rare talents appear at just the right time and place when they are needed.”

Gorg Borg Olivier, then Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, hoped in particular that Malta could relay to the United Nations some echoes of the innovative encyclical that Pope John XXIII had addressed to the whole world, called Pacem in Terris. In the midst of the cold war, the Pope had argued that it was still possible to discover policies at a global level that would be acceptable to both sides, west and east, despite their seeming to be engaged in hopeless ideological warfare.

So Dr Borg Olivier and his close collaborators were fairly clear in their mind about the general thrust that had to be pursued, but they had a twofold problem to find a legal mind capable of first translating the general thrust into a concrete proposal; and secondly to act as spokesman for Malta with the exceptional skills needed for the concrete proposal to gain widespread acceptance – if not world-wide consensus.

The solution was found surprisingly soon. Arvid Pardo was identified as just the rare man of genius who fitted perfectly into the desired role. He came to be almost tailor-made for the task.

“His Maltese father had practically died as a martyr of loyalty to his duties as an official of the World Health Organisation engaged in fighting an epidemic in the Soviet Union. The fact that he had both a Swedish mother and a Swedish wife helped equip him psychologically for the lifework he undertook when he became one of the very first employees of the United Nations.

“Thirdly his globe trotting career with that institution reached its pinnacle when he became the personal assistant of Dag Hammarskjold, a position that enabled him to acquire an exceptional knowledge of the inner workings of the United Nations in all its complexity. Pardo with a notable fall in salary and the scanty resources available to him accepted to become the first representative of Malta at the United Nations.”

Dr Gonzi said that at the United Nations various proposals were being made concerning the sea. The United States’ representatives were asking for funding for exploration of the seabed and Latin American countries were claiming extensions of territorial waters in ways that seemed to challenge the old principle of Grotius, Mare Liberum; and so on.

“It required the genius of a man like Pardo to conceive a proposal that would respond to the challenge of securing the peace at sea that was essential for Malta’s survival through a new legal order in ocean space. His proposal was a model of international relations that went beyond peaceful co-existence between the great powers and established instead collaboration between them in a positive response to the just claims of the emerging third world.

“Declaring the seabed beyond the limits of national jurisdiction to be the common heritage of mankind was the only readily available way of translating into international law, Pope John XXIII’s assertion that the global common good should be the goal of all political activity.”

Capping his speech with two footnotes, Dr Gonzi said that there then followed “a now unfortunate constellation of circumstances” soon after the historic launching of the Common Heritage idea.

“In Malta the Government changed and Pardo ceased to be our Ambassador. At the United Nations, the developing countries who had come together in a structural way for the first time in support of Pardo’s proposal had lost their leader. The new Law of the Sea that eventually came out of the Convention greatly disappointed Pardo and Malta, but the Common Heritage had been inscribed in international law and we remained convinced that the development of technology would sooner rather than later lead to its better recognition as a foundation stone of a new system of world governance in the Information Age.

“Secondly, Malta since joining the European Union has succeeded in helping to generate a new realization of the importance of the sea and of the coastal zones, especially in the perspective of managing the Mediterranean as a link and not as a barrier between Europe and Africa. That prospect is also in great part a legacy of Pardo’s – whose monument I am now privileged to unveil.”