Andrew Thomson

Andrew Thomson trained in medicine at Auckland, finishing first in his year in 1987, then spent the 1990s in the field for the Red Cross and the United Nations: Cambodia, Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia. Some of that work was forensic, opening mass graves so the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia would have evidence to put before a court. Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures, published in 2004 with Kenneth Cain and Heidi Postlewait, braids his account together with theirs and accuses the UN of drift, dysfunction and neglect across the missions all three had served in. The organisation pushed him out of his post. The Government Accountability Project took up his case, and four months later he was back with a promotion and a fresh contract. His old medical school gave him a Distinguished Alumni Award in 2006. Born in Wellington in 1963, his childhood was spent between the Solomon Islands and Auckland.