Sitting on the second-floor balcony of his Rivercross apartment, Sir Richard recounts how he was incommunicado in the fall of 2000 as his primatologist wife, now Lady Alison Jolly, was studying lemurs in the forests of Madagascar.  Upon their return to England, he found there had been frantic messages for him from the Foreign Office, asking him to confirm that he would accept the title of KCMG or Knight Commander, The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George.  “I was the last but one person to respond,” says Sir Richard, a towering, white-haired distinguished-looking gentleman in his late 60s.  “I was a little embarrassed – on the other hand, I didn’t refuse,” he says, adding with a smile, “I regret to say it sort of grows on you.”

A development economist by training, Sir Richard served as UNICEF’s Deputy Executive Director from 1982 to 1995 and as special coordinator of the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Report from 1996 to 2000.  Prior to all of this, he was Director of the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in England.

In semi-retirement now, he is working with the United Nations Intellectual History Project, focusing on the social and economic actions of the UN, an organization whose goals he remains ardently devoted to.  “Many people seem to believe that the UN is mostly concerned with Security Council debates, peace-keeping, and humanitarian action,” he says, speaking slowly and deliberately.  “The truth is that the majority of people at the UN work in areas relating to health, education, human rights, and economic and social development.  In these areas, the UN has been able to have more of an impact than in peace-keeping and political matters.”  He cites the fact that child mortality in developing countries is down despite the fact that these countries have been suffering economic stagnation and decline. He says his commitment to the UN’s humanitarian goals springs from several sources.  As a pacifist, he says he always felt there must be an alternative to war.  As a young economist working in Africa – he was a community development officer in Kenya in the late 1950s – he says he saw the need to review economics in terms of the reality of different countries, especially the poorer countries.  “Soon this leads you to ask how things could be different and how international policies could be changed to give poorer countries better opportunities and fairer deals.”

Armed with a degree in economics from Cambridge University and a doctorate from Yale in 1966, his intelligent probing shaped his work at UNICEF.  “He brought analytical and substantive issues to UNICEF,” says Hans R. Narula, a former colleague at the agency and a close friend and neighbor.  “He helped make UNICEF a developmental agency.  His excellent partnership with his boss, Jim Grant, was very good for the stability of UNICEF.”

For his part, Sir Richard says his years at UNICEF showed him how a UN agency “with a pocketful of pennies but truly committed staff, could work with local people” to accomplish some of these countries’ development goals.  “He has a unique combination of two things,” says Djibril Diallo, Director of the Communications Office at the United Nations Development Program and a close associate of Sir Richard since the early 1980s.  “He is a man of vision and always has the wherewithal to carry out that vision.”  Diallo says Sir Richard was known to help coin slogans like “adjustment with a human face” and follow them with an unequaled passion.

That passion is still clear from Sir Richard’s vision of the UN’s role in the current world situation.  He hopes that the sidelining of the UN in Iraq turns out to be temporary, feeling that without UN involvement, the coalition forces could lose credibility and fail to achieve stability and full democracy.  “Certainly the UN as a whole needs to be brought back and allowed to play a much fuller role,” he says, though he does not offer any concrete suggestions on how this might be done.  He does, however, mention that UNICEF, the World Food Program, and some other UN agencies already have several hundred staff in different parts of Iraq doing
their best to protect children and others from the immediate consequences of the war.

Another cause Sir Richard has been passionate about for a long time is the settling of UN staff on Roosevelt Island.  Diallo says Sir Richard encouraged UN people from different parts of the world to move here, knowing they would find it a smooth transition to a life away from their countries.  He stressed the greenery, the open space, and the fact that the Island was not too far from work.  “The General Assembly and the UN Secretariat is only a couple of hundred yards from Southpoint,” he says.  “When we moved here, we always thought there was a link between the international diversity of the UN and the diversity of the Island.”

The Island was home to his four children, Margareta, now an academic at Exeter University in England; Susan, a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies, also in England; Arthur, formerly a stunt-man specializing in setting himself on fire but now a helicopter pilot in Alabama; and Richard, a computer programmer based in Scotland. 

Recalling with fondness the annual Christmas high tea Sir Richard and his wife organized for the families of UNICEF staffers, Dr. Sudershan Narula, Director of Medical Services at the UN, mentioned that Arthur kept a snake as a pet.  Thankfully, the snake never made an appearance at these social events and the children, albeit a trifle wary of the coiled reptile, happily played games.  She added that Sir Richard will always be “just Richard” for her because she has been his physician and because he is not the kind of person to put on any airs.

Sir Richard really does seem to take the honor with a pinch of salt.  He said he initially thought the honor was anachronistic and that two of his four children did not attend the ceremony at Buckingham Palace because they felt the same way.

He practically chuckles as he mentions the informal version of what the abbreviation may stand for, starting with the expansion of CMG or “Call me God” instead of  “Companion, The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George” and says KCMG could stand for “Kindly call me God” instead of “Knight Commander, The Most....”  The cherry on the cake is the expanded version of GCMG, or “Knights Grand Cross, The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George, the highest honor: “God calls me God.”

Having spent a few years away from the Island, mainly in Sussex, “Richard” now plans to spend more time here as he works on the UN History project.

To get an inkling about what else he might do, let’s just say he was spending the weekend reading Lenin’s Imperialism, had plans to see Urinetown, and had entries like Uppsala, Ethiopia, and Boston as destinations on his itinerary.

For Sir Richard, this is not at all out of the ordinary.