Professor Andrew Mack Memorial Fund

Andrew Mack – always Andy to his many friends across the world – passed away in Vancouver on January 20th 2021 after a fight with illness that challenged even his wonderfully equable temperament.

He had been an Adjunct Professor in the School for International Studies at SFU, almost from its foundation, having brought his internationally funded Human Security Report Project (HSRP) to the School and the University early in 2007. He was always grateful to then President Michael Stevenson for having made this possible, as was the young School for International Studies that benefited so much from Andrew’s presence and that of HSRP.

Andrew started the Human Security Report Project following his service from 1998 to 2001 as Director of the Strategic Planning Office in the Executive Office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. He had become convinced that the UN and the international community generally lacked adequate and reliable information on trends in global warfare. So how could the UN determine whether its efforts in conflict prevention and peace building were at all effective without any baseline data? The HSRP set out to fill the knowledge gaps, working closely with the Peace Research Institute Oslo and the Uppsala (University) Conflict Data Program.

Around the turn of the millennium it was widely believed that the end of the Cold War had ushered in an era of spiraling armed violence and civil war. The first of the Human Security Reports showed that this idea was mistaken, and that there had actually been a decline in such conflicts since the early 1990s. The argument that the main driver of change had been the actions of the international community in conflict prevention and peace-building was controversial, but Andrew Mack stuck with it. The 2013 Report maintained that the evidence clearly showed that for all its faults and limitations, global security governance has been effective.

The Report on which Andrew was working towards the end of his life would have shown up the more recent, very disturbing reversal of the twenty year trend toward fewer and less deadly wars. But even then Andrew was moderately optimistic as well as strongly opposed to the tendency of the times to blame Islam as “a religion of violence”.

Andrew had a really remarkable life, rich in adventure, that started in the polite English suburban, stockbroker town of Reigate. He preferred fishing to going to school and as a chronic truant he was sent at last to join the Royal Air Force, where he was first trained to be a fitter – a mechanic – before the RAF recognized his potential and put him into officer training and to become a pilot. He liked to joke about his failure finally to get his ‘wings’ as a pilot because, for some reason, he could never get the hang of night-flying. So he resigned from the airforce and spent several years as a meteorologist with the British Antarctic Survey. Then, for a time, he was a diamond prospector in Sierra Leone. Later, he put his Antarctic skiing experience to good use by earning a living in writing for ski and mountain magazines while he studied for university entrance. He still skied well when he was in his late sixties.

But his passion, apart from peace research, was sailing – he twice sailed single-handed between Australia and New Zealand – and later exploring the coasts of BC in the powerboats that he owned with his wife Laura. They, and the small Belgian barge dog, ‘Skippy’ that they both adored, spent many happy years living aboard ‘Fancy Free’ in Spruce Harbour in Vancouver.

So many friends of Andrew’s around the world will miss his warmth and humour, and the kindness that he liked to try to hide behind the image – never very convincing though it was– of being a rough, tough Australian. He was a fine and remarkable man who touched many lives.