Dr. Robert
Muller's 2002 World Citizenship Award Acceptance
Speech
Read Short
Biography
Dear David Krieger, Frank
Kelly, your Excellencies President and Mrs. Robinson,
and beloved brothers and sisters,
If anyone had told me 50 years ago, during
World War II, that I would be still alive and stand here
today to receive your prestigious World Citizenship Award
in presence of my beloved wife Barbara, my son Philippe
and two of my grandchildren, Robert and Christina, I would
have never believed it.
I joined the United Nations
in l948 as a young man who had been in a German Gestapo
prison, a French Resistance fighter and saw the most horrible
atrocities of war and destruction. I come from Alsace-Lorraine,
a province of France bordering Germany, where my grandparents
knew three wars and changed nationality five times and
my father was once a German and once a French soldier.
Almost all my male schoolmates of the year l939 were killed
in German or French uniforms.
If this has happened between two highly
civilized, white countries, how could I expect white and
black countries, communists and capitalists, rich and
poor nations, thousands of ethnic groups, religions and
languages o be able to live together in peace? Surely
there would be, sooner or later, an incident that would
trigger off another world war. Well, there was no third
world war.
In the disaffected armaments factory in
Lake Success where the United Nations was first located,
and where I was an intern, a British delegate asked me
what I was doing there. I answered: " I came here
to work for peace, because I do not want my children and
grandchildren to know the horrors I saw in World War II."
He commented: " I pity you, because you will lose
your job. This organization will not last more than five
years." Well, it celebrates today its fifty-seventh
anniversary.
I was also told in Lake Success that decolonization,
the priority item on the agenda of world affairs would
take the UN a hundred years to solve. Well the UN did
it in forty years. I was told the same about racial discrimination,
apartheid, human rights, women's rights, the Berlin Wall,
the cold war, the absence of whole China from the UN,
and there were other examples. Your honoring tonight President
Arthur Robinson of Trinidad and Tobago for his role in
the creation of an International Criminal Court is one
of these examples.
Let me in the brief time given to me tell
you what my dreams and objectives are for this century
and millennium we must:
- Absolutely make this planet at long
last a true paradise.
- Eliminate from it all nuclear, chemical,
biological and other weapons.
- Transform all militaries into peace
and police forces.
- Stop wounding and destroying our
Mother Earth unnecessarily.\
- Eliminate the remaining excessive
poverty on the planet.
- Make out of all humans a united,
world family.\
- See the birth of a new, political,
peaceful world order. Why not a
- World Union like the European Union?
- Attain a life of fulfillment and
happiness for all humans.
- Achieve humanity's harmony with the
Earth and the heavens.
- Be the ultimate success of the universe
and God.
In order to achieve that, we must:
See the world with global eyes.
Love the world with a global heart.
Understand the world with a global mind.
Merge with the world and the heavens with a global soul.
Achieve our own inner and outer peace, harmony and happiness.
And please, dear brothers and sisters,
I beg you, I implore you to write down your personal,
own ideas and dreams for a better world. I listened to
my wife Barbara, from Santa Barbara, who on July 14, l994,
at a conference at La Casa de Maria, told us that there
were 2000 days left to l January 2000 and that we should
write down one idea a day to reach a total of 2000 on
New Year's Day of the new millennium. I listened to her,
reached 2500 ideas in 2000 and a week ago in your beautiful,
inspiring city of Santa Barbara a total of 5000, 4000
of which are already published by Barbara. And it is here
that my friend and author Douglas Gillies wrote and releases
tonight the first volume of my biography before I am dead!
I also want to thank Dyanne and Anita Routh for making
the gift of my biography available to each of you tonight.
Since my grandfather taught me to play
the harmonica in order to celebrate harmony, allow me
to play to you the Ode to Joy of Beethoven in the words
of which the whole humanity becomes one, wonderful, peaceful,
cooperating family of brothers and sisters on our miraculous
planetary home in the vast Universe. I do not know any
artist or poet who has glorified nuclear missiles.
Biography
Born in Belgium in 1923, and raised
in France, Robert Muller experienced constant political
and cultural turmoil during his youth. He knew the horrors
of World War II, of being a refugee, of Nazi occupation
and imprisonment. During the war he was a member of the
French Resistance. Afterward, he returned home and earned
a Doctorate of Law from the University of Strasbourg.
In 1948 he entered and won an essay contest on how to
govern the world, the prize of which was an internship
at the newly created United Nations.
Dr. Muller devoted the next 38 years
of his life at the United Nations, until his retirement
in 1986. He rose through the ranks at the UN to the position
of Assistant Secretary-General. He worked directly with
three secretaries-general, U Thant, Kurt Waldheim and
Javier Perez de Cuellar, as director of the secretary
general's office, as secretary of the Economic and Social
Council and as deputy under-secretary-general for coordination
and interagency affairs in the secretary-general's office.
In this capacity he helped coordinate the work of the
thirty-two U.N. specialized agencies and world programs.
He was also in charge of launching several world conferences
and international years. Appointed Assistant Secretary-General
by Perez de Cuellar, his last assignment at the U.N. was
to organize the fortieth anniversary of the U.N. in 1985.
Robert Muller is considered the “father
of global education,” and his World Core Curriculum
is used in an increasing number of schools around the
world and serves as the educational structure of the 34
Robert Muller Schools.
Dr. Muller is the author of fourteen
books which have been published in several languages.
In recognition of his work, he received the UNESCO Peace
Education Prize in 1989, the Albert Schweitzer International
Prize for the Humanities in 1993 and the Eleanor Roosevelt
Man of Vision Award in1994. He has also been nominated
for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Now in “active retirement,”
Dr. Muller is Chancellor Emeritus of the United Nations
University for Peace in Costa Rica. He is in great demand
as an international speaker and concentrates his efforts
on promoting greater human understanding and global awareness.
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