Dr Andrew Thomson - MBChB

Medical humanitarian, aid worker, peace keeper, human rights investigator, activist and author, Dr Andrew Thomson's desire to serve humanity through medical practice was nurtured by missionary parents.

Whilst a student at The University of Auckland's School of Medicine from 1981 to 1987 he befriended a refugee doctor, one of about 60 doctors out of 600 who survived Pol Pot's killing fields in Cambodia. After graduating first out of a class of 140 and working briefly at Auckland Hospital he went to Cambodia to work for the Red Cross. He then spent 13 years with the United Nations as a peacekeeper and medical doctor in Cambodia, Haiti, Rwanda and Bosnia where he documented and investigated war crimes including exhumation of mass graves and regularly risked his life. He has made a positive contribution to conflict resolution and international war crimes prosecutions.

Andrew is co-author of the whistle-blowing book, Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth, which recounts his professional life working for aid agencies. The book charges the UN with negligence, corruption and inadequate leadership and failure to prevent genocide. After the UN refused to renew his contract in 2004 it was pressured to do so by an international firm of lawyers. Andrew continues to work for the UN as Senior Medical Officer at its headquarters in New York.

Andrew received a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2006.