The model of a revolutionary diplomat

Omar Bakhet, until the end of 2005 the UN director in Brussels, stands out from the crowd of top UN bureaucrats, usually with a grand university background, and an "in" with their governments.

His training was more unconventional. A teenage freedom-fighter in Eritrea during the 1960s, he was put in charge of foreign relations - "dealing with governments and soliciting support for a revolution that was not well known at that time".

But he was soon thoroughly disillusioned with revolutions. A refugee paying his own way by working in all sorts of student jobs, he studied development economics in Munich and - then still Communist - Charles University in Prague ("you could live there for 50DM a month").

The 20-something exile eventually became a researcher at Lund University in Sweden and a Swedish national.

"In 1979 I went into the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva to see if they had any studies on migration. A young lady walked into the library and asked if they had the name and address of this fellow who’d done a study on refugee settlements in Africa...I told her it was me, was invited into a meeting that was about to begin, and was asked if

I could do a study on refugees in Africa, for six months. It coincided with my summer break from the university...

That was how my UN career began."

After an extraordinary career which took him to the most hair-raising places on earth, from Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, to Iran to assist almost six million refugees during the first Gulf War, to Rwanda after the genocidal Hutu-Tutsi conflict, his last posting was rather tame - three years running the "UN hub" in Brussels and improving relations with the EU institutions.

He is proud of what he achieved, like improved arrangements with the EU over conflict prevention and crisis management, €600m negotiated for the UN Development Programme (UNDP), and - a public relations coup - the award of the 2003 Sakharov Prize by the European Parliament for Freedom of Thought to "UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and all staff of the United Nations in special memory of Sergio Vieira de Mello and many other UN officials who have lost their lives in carrying out their work for peace in the world".

But - he is too loyal to say it - this last round of his career must have had its longueurs. The tangle of capital letters under one roof at 14 rue Montoyer, ENEP, UNAIDS, UN/DESA, UNDP, UNFPA (not to be confused with the UNFPA Asia Initiative), UN Habitat, UNICEF, UN/OCHA, UNODC, UNU-CRIS, WFP, WHO, and WIPO, suggests a quagmire of turf-wars, feuds and frustrated ambitions which can be glimpsed on the UN insider blogs.

Omar Bakhet is reticent about that, but forthright about the need for a radical shake-up of the UN and its whole culture. He sees it as ultimately a Cold War institution in need - like the EU - not of abolition ("we need the UN"), but of a rethink and proper leadership.

However, as with the EU, the sincere, imaginative types that the UN needs if it is to rediscover its purpose should not expect to have an easy time of it, not yet anyway.

• What’s on offer: plenty, in very different categories, though getting in is tough. Constantly cash-strapped, the UN secretariat in Manhattan is subject to regular recruitment freezes.

But the "UN system" is hydra-headed, with 16 specialised agencies like the WHO and WFP, and dozens of other related structures. Donor countries voluntarily back programmes (sometimes overlapping) which are quasi-autonomous - with evident implications for recruitment. In all, the UN employs about 51,000 people, from drivers to political analysts. Remuneration and allowances comparable to the EU institutions.

Where to start: http://jobs.un.org/.

Application forms and links to all the UN organisations and vacancies on the website.

Omar Bakhet, until the end of 2005 the UN director in Brussels, stands out from the crowd of top UN bureaucrats, usually with a grand university background, and an "in" with their governments.