• 5th Secretary General of the United Nations Javier Pérez de Cuéllar y de la Guerra, 1920

   

Pérez de Cuéllar joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1940 and the diplomatic service in 1944, serving subsequently as Secretary at Peru's embassy in France, where he met and married his first wife, the former Yvette Roberts. He also held posts in the United Kingdom, Bolivia, and Brazil, and later served as ambassador to Switzerland, the Soviet Union, (concurrently in Poland), and Venezuela. From his first marriage, Mr. Perez de Cuellar has a son, Francisco (b. Paris) and a daughter, Agueda Cristina (b. London).

He was a junior member of the Peruvian delegation to the first session of the General Assembly, which convened in London in 1946, and a member of the delegations to the 25th through 30th sessions of the Assembly. In 1971, he was appointed permanent representative of Peru to the United Nations, and he led his country's delegation to all sessions of the Assembly from then until 1975.

In 1973 and 1974, he represented his country in the Security Council, serving as its President at the time of the events in Cyprus in July 1974. On September 18, 1975, he was appointed Special Representative of the Secretary General in Cyprus – a post he held until December 1977, when he rejoined the Peruvian Foreign Service. During his time in Cyprus, Mr. Perez de Cuellar married his second wife, the former Marcela Temple Seminario, with whom he had no children.

On February 27, 1979, he was appointed as United Nations Under-Secretary General for Special Political Affairs. From April 1981, while still holding this post, he acted as the Secretary General's Personal Representative on the situation relating to Afghanistan. In that capacity, he visited Pakistan and Afghanistan in April and August of that year in order to continue the negotiations initiated by the Secretary General some months earlier.

On December 31, 1981, Pérez de Cuéllar succeeded Kurt Waldheim as Secretary General and was re-elected for a second term in October 1986. During his two terms, he led mediations between Britain and Argentina in the aftermath of the Falklands War and promoted the efforts of the Contadora Group to bring peace and stability to Central America. He also interceded in the negotiations for the independence of Namibia, the conflict in Western Sahara between Morocco and the Polisario Front, and the Cyprus issue. He also presided in 1986 an international arbitration committee that ruled on the Rainbow Warrior incident between New Zealand and France. Shortly before the end of his second term, he rejected an unofficial request by members of the Security Council to reconsider his earlier decision not to run for a third term, shortened to two years, as a search for his successor had not, as of then, yielded a consensus candidate. A candidate was found in late December 1991, and his second term as Secretary General concluded, as scheduled, on December 31, 1991.

Pérez de Cuéllar ran unsuccessfully against Alberto Fujimori for president of Peru in 1995; following Fujimori's resignation over corruption charges, he served as prime minister and foreign minister from November 2000 until July 2001. After Alejandro Toledo's election as president in 2001, he went to Paris as Peru's ambassador to France, retiring in 2004.

In 1997, Pérez de Cuéllar published his memoir Pilgrimage for Peace in which he recounted his years at the UN. He served as Permanent Delegate of Peru to UNESCO until 2004.

Pérez de Cuéllar celebrated his 100th birthday in January 2020 and received congratulations from the United Nations on his 100 years of life. He was the first UN Secretary General to become a centenarian.

Pérez de Cuéllar died at his home in Lima on 4 March 2020 two months after he turned 100.