Arvid Pardo

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Arvid Pardo" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2016) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Arvid Pardo (February 12, 1914 – June 19, 1999) was a

Pardo was born in Rome. His father, Guido Pardo,^[2] was born in Malta in 1874 to Enrico Pardo of Sephardic Jewish origin from Livorno. Guido Pardo worked for the International Labour Organization and died of typhus while on a relief mission in the Soviet Union in 1922. His Swedish mother died a year later during an appendectomy and his brother was killed in an automobile accident. He became the ward of a friend of his father, Italian diplomat Bernardo Attolico, who served as Ambassador to Brazil, the Soviet Union, Germany and the Vatican. Attolico sent him to school at Collegio Mondragone, Frascati, and the young Pardo spent his vacations with Attolico at the latter's various diplomatic posts.^{[citation needed]}

Pardo spoke Italian, English, French, Swedish and Spanish fluently, and knew German fairly well.^{[citation needed]} As a student in pre-war Rome, he met Margit Claeson, a Swedish textile designer. In 1947, once his finances were secure, he went to Sweden to find her (they had lost touch during the war) and married her. They had three children: Christina (1949, m. Menez), Lars (1951) and David (1952), all educated in England. His wife and children all outlived him.^{[citation needed]}

Pardo graduated in international law at the

At first Pardo worked as a dishwasher and waiter in a London restaurant chain until he sought out a friend of his father's, David Owen, who was then helping to set up the United Nations in London. Owen hired him as an assistant in the documentary section, and despite holding a doctorate, he worked as a junior clerk in charge of archives in 1945–6. He then served in the Department of Trusteeship and Non-Self-Governing Territories until 1960. He then joined the Secretariat of the Technical Assistance Board (forerunner of the UNDP) and served as deputy representative in Nigeria and Ecuador, where he was stationed before being selected in 1964 as the first Permanent Representative of Malta to the United Nations by the newly independent country that he had visited only briefly during his life.^{[citation needed]}

During his time as UN delegate, which ended in 1971 after

From 1972 to 1975 Pardo was coordinator of the ocean studies program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. From 1975 to 1990 he was on the USC faculty, teaching political science (1975–81) and international relations (1981–90). For those fifteen years, he was a senior fellow at the Institute of Marine and Coastal Studies.^{[citation needed]}

Pardo was made a Knight of Malta in 1992. He was resident in Seattle when he died there in 1999^[8] (some sources claim he was living in Houston and died there).^[9][10][11]

Notes

References

• Raymond Daniell (January 24, 1965). "Maltese at U.N. a Rare Diplomat". The New York Times. p. 21.
• "Malta's Imaginative and Erudite U.N. Delegate". The New York Times. December 10, 1969. p. 5.
• Christol, Carl Q. (1999). "Arvid Pardo". In Memoriam. PS: Political Science & Politics. 32 (4).
  JSTOR 420174
  .

• Pardo's 1967 speech