It is said that some people are born great. Some have greatness thrust upon them while some achieve greatness by dint of hard work. Kofi Atta Annan, certainly belonged to the last group. The Ghanaian diplomat, who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006, was born on April 8, 1938. His contribution to civilization and diplomacy certainly made Black Africa proud. Annan and the UN were awarded the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. Born in Kumasi, Ghana, Annan studied Economics at Macalester College, International Relations from the Graduate Institute, Geneva, and Management at MIT. Annan joined the UN in 1962, working for the World Health Organization’s Geneva office. He went on to work in several capacities at the UN Headquarters including serving as the Under-Secretary-General for peacekeeping between March 1992 and December 1996. He was appointed as the Secretary-General on 13 December 1996 by the Security Council, and later confirmed by the General Assembly, making him the first office holder to be elected from the UN staff itself. He was re-elected for a second term in 2001, and was succeeded as Secretary-General by Ban Ki-moon on 1 January 2007.
As the Secretary-General, Annan reformed the UN bureaucracy; he primed the UN to combat HIV, especially in Africa; and launched the UN Global Compact. He has been criticized for not expanding the Security Council and faced calls for resignation after an investigation into the Oil-for-Food Program. After leaving the UN, he founded the Kofi Annan Foundation in 2007 to work on international development. In 2012, Annan was named the UN–Arab League Joint Special Representative for Syria, to help find a resolution to ongoing conflict there. Annan quit the position after becoming frustrated with the UN’s lack of progress with regard to conflict resolution. In September 2016, Annan was appointed to lead a UN commission to investigate the Rohingya crisis in Myanmar. Kofi Annan Foundation
In 2007, he established the Kofi Annan Foundation, an independent, not-for-profit organization that works to promote better global governance and strengthen the capacities of people and countries to achieve a fairer, more peaceful world.
The Foundation works mainly through private diplomacy, where Kofi Annan provides informal counsel and participates in discreet diplomatic initiatives to avert or resolve crises by applying his unique experience and inspirational leadership. He is often asked to intercede in crises, sometimes as an impartial independent mediator, sometimes as a special envoy of the international community. In recent years he has provided such counsel to Burkina Faso, Kenya, Myanmar, Senegal, Syria/Iraq and Colombia.
It has been said that only a few persons in history have received the volume of honours and awards like Dr. Annan. It will take great space to list out the numerous awards here. Let it suffice to say that the famed soft-spoken diplomat has bagged nine highly coveted international honours, twenty-one major international awards and thirty-two honorary doctorate degrees from renowned institutions across the globe. It is certainly a measure of the super success which the man attained in his career. And he is not yet eighty.
