Who is Baquer Namazi? - Maggie Black

Baquer Namazi 1935–

Baquer Namazi, a long-time servant of UNICEF, now aged 80 and in frail health, is currently imprisoned in Evin Prison, Tehran. Both he and his son Siamak are citizens of both Iran and the US. In mid-October 2016, they were given ten-year sentences for unspecified actions hostile to their country of origin. There is nothing in Baquer Namazi’s life or career that offers any conceivable grounds for this sentence.

Born in Baghdad in 1935 to Iranian parents, Baquer’s father, Professor Mohsen Namazi, had a distinguished academic career. Following India’s Independence in 1947, he took up a post as Professor of Arab and Persian Studies at Kolkata (then Calcutta) University. In his teens, therefore, Baquer was brought up overseas, studying at St Xavier’s College, Kolkata, and later studied in the US for an MA at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee.

Baquer’s early career was in government service in Iran. In 1967, he represented Iran at a UNICEF Regional Seminar on Children and Youth in National Planning in Bangkok. Shortly afterwards, he was invited to join UNICEF as their Regional Planning Officer for East Asia and Pakistan, advocating with Ministries of Planning the importance of investing in services for children as a contribution to national development.

In 1971, Baquer was invited to join his own country’s Planning and Budget Organization in a senior position, and subsequently became its Deputy Director. For several years, he served the government of the Shah in various capacities, at one stage as Governor of Khuzestan Province. However, in the course of the long agitation against the Shah’s regime, he resigned from his post and returned to Tehran. He continued to live there with his family for some years after the 1979 Revolution.

In 1984, Baquer Namazi – who left Iran in the early 1980s – again joined UNICEF, this time in New York headquarters, as a Policy and Planning Advisor. Among other assignments, he worked on a policy paper concerning the protection of children in armed conflict. This brought him into contact with efforts then underway in Europe to draft a UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. His recognition that such an instrument would have immense value as an advocacy tool for UNICEF’s programmes helped bring UNICEF into the process which later led to the passage of the Convention and its almost universal ratification – including in 1994 by the Government of Iran.

In 1986, Baquer Namazi was appointed UNICEF Representative in Somalia. This was first of three head-of-mission jobs he undertook in countries in Africa, with a special concern for child victims of armed conflict and other ‘difficult circumstances’. He was also deeply concerned for marginalized children and families, particularly those of nomadic groups who tend to be excluded from regular health and education services. In 1987 he became Country Representative for Kenya.

In 1991, Baquer became UNICEF’s Representative in Egypt, a position he retired from in 1997. During this assignment he again focused on issues of marginalization and regions where child poverty was extreme. During one mission in Upper Egypt, the team he was leading was ambushed by a terrorist group, and he was lucky to escape with his life – others did not. He was willing to jeopardise his life on behalf of children, but no-one imagined that this would include, at the age of 80, imprisonment and trial for engaging, as a humanitarian, in actions supposedly inimical to Iran’s national interest.

Since his retirement from UNICEF, Baquer has lived with his wife in Tehran. He has been active in humanitarian work, playing an influential role in shaping the programme of the Hamyaran NGO Resource Centre established in 1998. This non-profit, independent institute runs a programme designed to boost the capacity of Iranian NGOs by training, advocacy and use of participatory techniques. The goals of reducing poverty, vulnerability and deprivation that have been at the heart of Baquer’s career have continued to inform his life in retirement.

Baquer Namazi’s career has been dominated by a humanitarian impulse, and he has made a contribution appreciated by hundreds of colleagues and programme partners, touching the lives of thousands of people throughout the world.