Over on the Washington Independent, Spencer Ackerman writes a piece about what Sergio Vieira de Mello meant to the UN system. It's a great piece. Definitely worth a read.

Vieira de Mello represented a transformation toward a more activist U.N. diplomat -- one more comfortable settling disputes and tending to humanitarian crises in combat zones than smoothing over hurt feelings at U.N. headquarters in New York. "He never got muddy, despite wading in the mud so frequently," said [ friend of UN Dispatch James] Traub, meaning that both literally and figuratively.

While Vieira de Mello might have been the best of that trail-blazing generation, he most certainly is not the last. Among the places that generation is proving its mettle is, ironically, the country where Vieira gave his life: Iraq. Right now, the Swedish diplomat Steffan de Mistura has thrown himself into the thick of Iraq's toughest problems.

I'd also be remiss not to mention Lakdhar Brahimi, who served briefly as Algeria's Foreign Minister in the early 1990s, became a career UN official heading missions in Haiti and South Africa in the early to mid 1990s. He's most known, though, for three things: 1) He's the namesake of the "2000 Brahimi Report" on how to restore UN peacekeeping after its failures in Bosnia and Rwanda. This report is hugely influential and paved the way for UN's peacekeeping more recent successes in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cote D'Ivoire. 2) He was also the UN's top person on Afghanistan. And following the US-led toppling of the Taliban, he negotiated a ceasefire among competing militias and ethnic groups and paved the way for the constitution writing process and for the election of Hamid Karzai. 3) After his success in Afghanistan, the Secretary General sent him to Iraq to help restore the UN mission--which pulled out after the attack on the UN compound. He mediated between top Shiite leader Ali al-Sistani and CPA head Paul Bremmer, convincing the Americans to scrap their "Iraqi Interim Government" and convincing Sistani to be patient about holding elections. The eventual 2005 elections and "purple finger moment," which at the time was billed as a great success, was Brahimi's doing. It's just a shame he was not empowered to do more.

Ibrahim Gambari, a Nigerian who is spearheading the UN's diplomacy toward Myanmar, is also a go-to problem solver. It is hard to call Myanmar a "UN success," but on purely humanitarian concerns, he has done a great deal to get humanitarian access to the people of Burma. Jan Elliason, former Sweedish Foreign Minister, is also a person to watch. He was president of the General Assembly during the major debates over UN reform in 2005 and was later tapped as Special Envoy for Darfur. He's known as a skilled diplomat, though he was in a near impossible situation on Darfur.

Samantha Power marks the fifth year anniversary of Sergio Vieiro de Mello's assassination with a New York Times op-ed on terrorists' new front against aid workers.

Just as we Americans tried to make sense of [9-11], United Nations officials, nongovernmental workers and world leaders grappled with applying the lessons of August 19. But five years later -- and less than a week after Taliban forces in Afghanistan killed three female educators and a driver with the International Rescue Committee -- the individuals who carry out vital humanitarian and development work for the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations have never been more at risk.

The Baghdad bombing made it clear that the United Nations and humanitarian groups had moved from the 1990s, when their flags no longer offered them protection, to a phase in which their affiliations made them outright targets of Al Qaeda and other violent extremists.

One of the most dangerous places in the world for humanitarian workers is Somalia. The head of the United Nations Development Program's Somalia office was shot dead coming out of Mosque last month. And just yesterday, local World Food Program confirmed that employee Abdulkadir Diad Mohamed was killed while riding in his car.

In her essay, Power recommends steps the international community can take to keep aid workers safe. This includes spending more money on security for humanitarian organizations and, where possible, getting greater commitments from the host country to provide security. In places like Somalia where this latter option is not possible (and where the international community is not willing to expend many resources) aid workers may have no choice but to pull out. It is an unfortunate decision to have to make. As Power says, we need to do more to protect the protectors.

Five years ago today an explosive laden truck pulled rammed into the Baghdad headquarters of the United Nations killing 22 people, including the head of mission Sergio Vieira de Mello.

Sergio was a legend at the United Nations. His extraordinary talents as a peacemaker and diplomat touched the lives of millions of people around the world. Early in his career, he single handily negotiated (with the Khmer Rouge) for the repatriation of thousands of Cambodian refugees. From 1999 to 2002 he oversaw the building-from-scratch of the newest country on earth, East Timor. His great success at nation building led Secretary General Kofi Annan to appoint him as head of mission in Iraq where he would apply his gifts as a peacemaker, humanitarian and troubleshooter to the world's most complex conflict. Sadly, a terrorist's bomb took his life only a few months into his mission. Iraq descended into chaos not long thereafter.

Sergio may be gone, but his legacy lives on. The Pulitzer Prize winning author Samantha Power wrote a book about him this year. An HBO documentary and a feature film (by the director of Hotel Rwanda) are both on the way. And now, there is a new blog on the block to keep Sergio's vision of peacemaking fresh and build a movement for a smart foreign policy built upon the values he embodied as an international civil servant.

Chasing the Flame blog (which shares the title of Power's book) is written by Sergio's friends, admirers, and assorted foreign policy experts. Annick Stevenson, Sergio's former spokesperson, opens the blog.

Imagine a world in which everybody would speak to his/her neighbor, would listen to his/her views and would try to understand them, would, more generally, always wish to know the will of others before deciding, would negotiate before envisaging any military reaction, would never ever view war as the solution to any conflict whatever the reasons may be...A world in which war would become impossible because it would too difficult to think of killing someone you share so much with. This world existed. It was in the mind of Sergio Vieira de Mello. This is how he conceived it and lived it, as much as he could, or at least as a matter of principle.

Add Chasing the Flame to your blogrolls and RSS feeds. Sergio's vision of diplomacy and constructive dialogue is as urgent and relevant to American foreign policy as it ever was.

(Image credit: SergioVM Foundation)