Victor Umbricht

Victor Umbricht
Born
Victor Hermann Umbricht

(1915-10-25)25 October 1915
Endingen, Switzerland
Died14 July 1988(1988-07-14) (aged 72)
Basel, Switzerland
OccupationDiplomat

Victor Hermann Umbricht (born 25 October 1915 in Endingen; died 14 July 1988 in Basel) was a Swiss lawyer, diplomat and board member of the Ciba-Geigy pharmaceutical company.[1][2]

Biography

Umbricht was a court clerk in Baden from 1939 to 1941.[3] In 1941 he joined the Swiss Federal Political Department, for which he worked as a diplomat in Ankara, London and Washington until 1953.[1] From 1953 to 1957 he was in Washington as Deputy Director of the World Bank for Europe, Africa and Australasia.[1] In 1957 he returned to Switzerland and was director of the Swiss Federal Tax Administration until 1960.[1]

In the same year, he moved to the private sector and joined Ciba AG.[3] Initially, he was active as a UN financial advisor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1960, where he co-founded the Central Bank.[1][3] In 1962 he went to the USA and headed the Ciba branch there until 1965.[1][3] After his return to Switzerland, he became a member and delegate of the Board of Directors of Ciba-Geigy AG until 1985.[3] The Board of Directors regularly made him available for international humanitarian tasks.[3]

1968 to 1976, he was President of the Mekong Committee (Organization for the Economic Development of the Mekong Region).[3] From 1972 to 1973 he headed the UN Organization for the fight against hunger and for the reconstruction in Bangladesh, the United Nations Relief Operation Dacca (UNROD).[1][3][4] From 1970 to 1979, Umbricht was a member and vice-president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).[1][3] In addition, under his leadership, ICRC missions were carried out in Nicaragua, Guatemala and Mexico from 1977 to 1979.[3]

In 1977, after Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda dissolved the East African Community and blocked common assets, he was named the East Africa mediator, in the rank of UN Under-Secretary-General, from 1977 to 1984, with mandates from the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).[1][3] After lengthy negotiations, a de-entwining agreement was concluded in 1984.[3]

Victor Umbricht was also involved in domestic politics: Since the 1970s he served as a member of the advisory commission on the accession of Switzerland to the UN,[3] which he was skeptical about.[1] In 1962 he founded the Swiss Center in New York and was its president until 1970.[3] From 1970 to 1986 he was in chair of the Swiss-Chinese Society.[3] During his work for the UN, Victor Umbricht served under four UNO secretaries-general.[3]

His estate is located in the Archive for Contemporary History of ETH Zurich.[1]

Honors

Publications

  • Multilateral mediation. Practical Experiences and Lessons. Dordrecht, Boston 1989, ISBN 90-247-3779-6

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Schwane, Daniel: "Umbricht, Victor" in German, French and Italian in the online Historical Dictionary of Switzerland.
  2. ↑ Umbricht, Victor H. (1989). Multilateral mediation: practical experiences and lessons mediation cases the East African community and short comments on mediation efforts between Bangladesh-Pakistan-India and Vietnam-USA. Dordrecht [the Netherlands] Boston London: M. Nijhoff. ISBN 978-90-247-3779-6.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Ruchti, Franziska; Zala, Sacha (2016). "Umbricht, Victor". Neue Deutsche Biographie (in German). Vol. 26. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot. pp. 621–622. (full text online).
  4. ↑ "Summary record of the Secretary-General's meeting on UNROD on 26 April 1972" (PDF). World Bank. 1972. pp. 1–7. Search PDF for "UNROD" to locate.

Further reading

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