Cedric Thornberry is an international lawyer and former Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations, for which he worked for 17 years. He spent most of his United Nations service in international peace keeping in Cyprus, the Middle East, ex-Yugoslavia and Somalia.[1]
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Cedric Thornberry taught at Cambridge University and the London School of Economics, was a foreign correspondent for The Guardian in Greece and was a practising human rights lawyer. Originally from Northern Ireland, he was one of the founders of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association in 1968. In the 1970s he represented many applicants at the European Court of Human Rights. He is the father of Labour Party Member of Parliament Emily Thornberry.
Cedric Thornberry joined the United Nations in 1978 and became involved in the internationally-supervised settlement of the Namibia question, and was also in charge of the operational planning for the non-military side of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG). During UNTAG, he was the Director of the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General in Namibia, Martti Ahtisaari, and responsible for coordination of the Mission’s day-to-day political operation.
Thornberry also served as the Senior Political and Legal Adviser to UNFICYP and to UNTSO, and was Director of Administration and Management at UN headquarters for 4 years. He was Director of UNPROFOR Civil Affairs at the beginning of the Mission in February 1992, and shortly afterwards became Assistant-Secretary-General of the United Nations when he was made Deputy Chief of Mission of the 50,000-person UN operation in ex-Yugoslavia as well as senior negotiator with all of the Balkan parties. Until the appointment of an SRSG, he was in charge of UNPROFOR’s political, civil, legal and police activities. He remained head of UNPROFOR’s Civil Affairs until early 1994.
He is currently a consultant to NATO in the exercises it conducts with the Partnership for Peace countries and a visiting professor at King's College in London.
Cedric Thornberry has published several books and contributed many articles for publication in international journals, including: