Peter Thomson (diplomat)

Peter Thomson, a fifth generation Fijian, was born to British colonial administrator Sir Ian Thomson (Colonial Secretary in the 1960s and later as Governor of the British Virgin Islands) and his wife Lady Nancy Thomson.[5][6][7][8] He married publisher Marijcke Thomson in Fiji in 1973. They have two children, James and Nicola, and three granddaughters.

Educated at Suva Grammar School and Natabua High School, he finished schooling at the International Centre, Sevenoaks School, England, in 1967. He later obtained a BA in political studies at Auckland University and a postgraduate diploma in development studies at Wolfson College, Cambridge.[9]

From 1988 onwards, he worked as an investment and management consultant on Pacific Island affairs for various government agencies, regional organisations, universities and investment corporations.[14] In 1990, the East-West Center published his diagnostic study "Trade and Investment in the Pacific Islands."[15] His New Zealand-registered company, Thomson Pacific, managed Mitsubishi Trust Bank's real estate assets in Auckland. During this time he was a founding director and shareholder of Tabua Investments Ltd, one of the prime developers of Fiji's premier tourism resort Denarau Island Resort, and was a principal in the construction of the Sheraton Villas project at Denarau. He was a founder member of the executive committees of the Australia-Fiji Business Council and the New Zealand-Fiji Business Council,[16] and was elected to honorary membership of the New Zealand-Fiji Business Council in September 2007.

Having surrendered his Fiji citizenship by becoming an Australian and a New Zealand citizen after the 1987 military coups, he regained his original citizenship in 2009, following a Fiji Government decree authorising dual citizenship.[17][18]

Thomson speaking in November 2016 as President of the UN General Assembly

He resumed diplomatic duties for Fiji in 2010, when he was appointed Fiji's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. He took up the post in a context where Fiji's long-standing tradition of providing peace-keeping forces to the United Nations was facing opposition from New Zealand and Australia due to the 2006 military coup in Fiji. A few months before his appointment, Thomson had publicly criticised what he described as Australia's "ongoing campaign to choke off Fiji’s role as an international peacekeeper". In 2011, the United Nations requested Fiji to increase its deployment of peacekeepers in Iraq. In 2013, a battalion of Fijian peacekeepers was deployed to UNDOF (Golan, Syria).

As Fiji's Representative to the United Nations, he strove to broaden Fiji's diplomatic relations as widely as possible, so that during his time at the United Nations, Fiji formalised diplomatic relations with over ninety countries. He has been described as "spearheading vital elements of Fiji's Look North policy." Graham Davis wrote that Ambassador Thomson had "forged a new network of international relationships for Fiji … including membership of the Non-Aligned Movement", and that he has been a prime mover in developing the influence at the UN of the Pacific Small Island Developing States. In line with these efforts, Ambassador Thomson led a successful campaign to change the UN regional group's name from "the Asian Group" to the "Asia-Pacific Group", culminating in the formal name-change in September 2011.[19]

In 2011 in Kingston, Jamaica, he was elected as President of the Assembly of the 17th session of the International Seabed Authority (ISA),[20] and in 2015 was elected as President of the ISA's Council. In 2011–12, he served as a Vice-President of the 66th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. In 2012, he successfully led the campaign for Fiji's election to Chairmanship of the Group of 77 and China, the UN's largest negotiating bloc of 133 developing countries, and served in that capacity throughout 2013.[21]

In January 2014, Fiji was elected to the Presidency of the Executive Board of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS). In his capacity as Fiji's Permanent Representative, Ambassador Thomson undertook the UNDP Presidency role, with Executive Board oversight responsibilities for over US$7 billion of UN annual funding.

During the intergovernmental negotiations at the United Nations between 2013 and 2015 leading to the adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Ambassador Thomson was an influential spokesperson on behalf of developing countries. As part of the Pacific Small Island Developing States group, he was particularly forceful in the creation of SDG14, the Ocean Goal, that sets out to conserve and sustainably use the Ocean's resources.

On 13 June 2016, Peter Thomson was elected as the 71st President of the United Nations General Assembly.[22] He thereby became the first person from the Pacific Islands region to fill the top post of the United Nations,[23] serving in that capacity from September 2016 to September 2017. During his time as president, he oversaw the transition of UN Secretary-Generalship from Ban Ki-moon to Antonio Guterres. In support of the implementation of SDG14, President Thomson organised the first UN Ocean Conference. Held at the UN campus in June 2017, it was co-hosted by Fiji and Sweden, and is widely regarded as the turning point in global action to reverse the decline in the Ocean's health.

In October 2017 he was appointed as the United Nations Secretary-General's Special Envoy for the Ocean, in which role he leads UN advocacy and outreach efforts to galvanise political momentum, mobilise action and raise ambition for the implementation of the UN's Sustainable Development Goal 14.

Thomson is the author of Kava in the Blood, his account of the 1987 Fiji coup d'état. The book was the winner of New Zealand's E.H.McCormick Prize for non-fiction in 2000.[24] He is the editor and publisher of the pictorial/historical book Fiji in the Forties and Fifties, written by his father, with photographs by Rob Wright,[25] and is the author of Wild Vanilla.

• Media related to Peter Thomson (diplomat) at Wikimedia Commons
• "The Folly of Canberra's Stand against Fiji", full text of Peter Thomson's speech to the Australia-Fiji Business Council Conference, 14 September 2009 (on the website of the Auckland University of Technology)