One month before America’s Bicentennial, Sichan Siv arrived at Wallingford, Connecticut with two dollars at his pocket. Before that, he had spent a few months in Thailand teaching English to fellow refugees in a camp, and learning Buddhist precepts as a monk in a nearby temple. The previous year, he survived two Khmer Rouge death sentences and their slave labor hell, working 18 hours a day with just one meal. He had missed the last U.S. evacuation helicopter by 30 minutes in April 1975, when he chose to attend a meeting to arrange food and medical supplies for some 3,000 families.

When he was a child, his mother told him to “never give up hope, no matter what happens.” Hope kept him alive and helped him move forward in these most difficult circumstances. In March 2001, President George W. Bush appointed Siv as a delegate to the 57th U.N. Commission of Human Rights. In October of the same year, the President nominated him, and he was unanimously confirmed by the senate, as the 28th U.S Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council.

Until 2006, he concurrently represented the United States at the U.N. General Assembly and Security Council. His responsibilities ranged from cradle to coffin: children, health, HIV/AIDs, Economic Issues, food Crisis, humanitarian disasters, human rights, refugees, women, and aging. The Unites States is the largest donor to all these programs and Ambassador Siv’s office at the U.S. Mission to the U.N. oversaw some 70% of the U.N. budget.