Introduction
Sir Shridath Surendranath "Sonny" Ramphal GCMG AC ONZ OE OCC QC (born 3 October 1928) served as the second Commonwealth Secretary-General from 1975 to 1990. He previously served as the Foreign Minister of Guyana, from 1972 to 1975 and Assistant Attorney General of the West Indies Federation from 1958 to 1962.
Shridath Ramphal is an Earth Charter International Commission member.
Biography
Ramphal was born in New Amsterdam, British Guiana, to an Indo-Guyanese family. He studied law at Gray's Inn in London, where he was called to the bar in 1951. He then studied for a law degree at King's College London and was a Guggenheim Fellow at Harvard Law School.
He started his legal career as a Crown Counsel in the Attorney-General’s Office in 1953, becoming Solicitor-General and then Assistant Attorney-General of the short-lived West Indies Federation. After a period in private practice in Jamaica he returned to Guyana in 1965 to be the Attorney General. Two years later he was also appointed Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs, later becoming Minister of Justice (from 1973) and Minister of Foreign Affairs (from 1972). In 1975 he left Guyana to be Commonwealth Secretary-General.
He also served as the Chancellor of the University of Warwick from 1989 to 2002, at the University of the West Indies until 2003, and as Chancellor of the University of Guyana.
During Ramphal's time as Commonwealth Secretary-General, the United Kingdom represented by Margaret Thatcher was found to be in a minority of one on the issue of economic sanctions against apartheid South Africa.
With Ingvar Carlsson, he was in 1995 one of the co-chairs of the Commission on Global Governance, which reported on issues of international development, international security, globalization and global governance.
Family life
Ramphal has two daughters, Susan and Amanda, and two sons, Ian and Mark.
Selected bibliography
- Inseparable Humanity: An Anthology of Reflections (Hansib, 1988)
- Triumph for UNCLOS: The Guyana-Suriname Maritime Arbitration (Hansib, 2008)
- Caribbean Challenges: Sir Shridath Ramphal's Collected Counsel (Hansib, 2012)
Honours and awards
Sir Shridath was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG) in the 1966 Birthday Honours (the list was dated to 25 May of that year). He was knighted in the 1970 New Year Honours, and invested with his knighthood by the Queen at Buckingham Palace on 3 February. He was appointed a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (GCMG) in 1990.
On 26 February 1982, Sir Shridath was appointed an honorary Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).On 6 February 1990, Ramphal was the nineteenth appointee to the Order of New Zealand, New Zealand's highest civil honour. He was decorated as a Member of the Order of the Caribbean Community (OCC) in the first conferment in 1992. In May 2006 Ramphal was appointed an Honorary Fellow of Royal Society of Arts. He is a Vice-President of the Royal Commonwealth Society. The Ramphal Building at the University of Warwick was named in his honour.