Sir Shridath Ramphal, also known as ‘Sonny,’ was born on October 3, 1928 in New Amsterdam, Berbice. He was the eldest of James and Grace Ramphal’s five children. Sir Ramphal attended primary school at Grove, East Bank Demerara. He attended a secondary school which was founded by his father and was later enrolled at the Modern Educational Institute, which also was run by his dad. Sir Ramphal also attended Queen’s College and later left Georgetown in 1947 to study law.
He was called to the bar from Gray’s Inn in 1951, earning his Master’s Degree at King’s College, London in 1952. After his return to Guyana in 1953, he was appointed Crown Counsel and Assistant Attorney- General at the age of 25. In fact, he set the record for youngest Attorney General of our time.
Further to this, Sir Ramphal was appointed as Solicitor General in 1959. Ramphal also liked the idea of Caribbean integration. He was a proponent of the Federation of the West Indies, serving as its Assistant Attorney-General between 1961 and 1962. However, the Federation designed to bring together Caribbean countries, crumbled after Jamaica rejected it in a referendum, and the Government of Trinidad and Tobago decided to quit the grouping. A disappointed ‘Sonny’ left the region for Harvard University on a coveted Guggenheim scholarship before moving to Jamaica to practice law. It was from there that Guyana’s then Prime Minister, Forbes Burnham, invited
him to take up the post of Attorney General in 1965 and to draft the country’s Independence Constitution. In the years that followed, he took on the post of Minister of State in the Foreign Ministry and, in that role, he became an architect and advocate for CARIFTA and then CARICOM. He also headed a team of gifted diplomats in carving-out a respected place for Guyana in the international community. In 1957 and 1990, he was the Secretary-General of the Commonwealth of Nations and was the leading lawyer for Guyana in the maritime feud between Guyana and Suriname.
He was also persistent in getting the South African Government to free Nelson Mandela.
Ramphal’s articulateness was described as being in a class of its own. Critics said, “He was media savvy, even if on occasion a trifle wordy. He was a skilled negotiator, with a sharp legal mind.”
Additionally, his views on the dangers of the environment were well ahead of their time. This world
renowned Guyanese was also one of the first people to recognise – and to warn of – the dangers of global warming. He told the Inter-American Development Bank, back in 2000, that global warming exposes the Caribbean to more frequent and more intensive storm surges and sea level rises.
Sir Shridath will be 85 soon and received the Commonwealth Life-Time Achievement Award in
London last June. It is one of many such awards that he has received over the years.
He has also published over 25 works, receiving several honorary degrees along the way from prestigious Universities such as Oxford in Britain and Yale in the US, among others.
His contributions worldwide are endless but in all, he can be described as an exceptional being.
But even in his 80s, there is nothing holding back this erudite Ambassador. He holds the post of Co-Chair of the Commission on Global Governance, President of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and Chair of the International Steering Committee of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Leadership in Environmental and Development (LEAD) Programme. Sir Ramphal is also playing a lead role in advising Guyana in its territorial issue with Venezuela.