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Vote: | Above all else, we need a reaffirmation of political commitment at the highest levels to reducing the dangers that arise both from existing nuclear weapons and from further proliferation. |
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Vote: | Business, labor and civil society organizations have skills and resources that are vital in helping to build a more robust global community. |
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Vote: | Globalization is a fact of life. But I believe we have underestimated its fragility. |
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Vote: | I came here to show support for all the millions of people in the world who stand to benefit if the Millennium Development Goals are reached, especially the children who will be saved from malaria or Aids, who will grow up healthy, go to school and have the chance to earn their living and enjoy life. |
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Vote: | I urge the Iraqi leadership for sake of its own people... to seize this opportunity and thereby begin to end the isolation and suffering of the Iraqi people. |
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Vote: | If the United Nations does not attempt to chart a course for the world's people in the first decades of the new millennium, who will? |
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Vote: | Iraq has a new opportunity to comply with all these relevant resolutions of the Security Council. |
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Vote: | It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against the laws of gravity. |
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Vote: | Many African leaders refuse to send their troops on peace keeping missions abroad because they probably need their armies to intimidate their own populations. |
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Vote: | More countries have understood that women's equality is a prerequisite for development. |
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Vote: | National markets are held together by shared values and confidence in certain minimum standards. But in the new global market, people do not yet have that confidence. |
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Vote: | Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world. |
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Vote: | The Lord had the wonderful advantage of being able to work alone. |
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Vote: | The question is the morning after. What sort of Iraq do we wake up to after the bombing? What happens in the region? What impact could it have? These are questions leaders I have spoken to have posed. |
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Vote: | We cannot wait for governments to do it all. Globalization operates on Internet time. Governments tend to be slow moving by nature, because they have to build political support for every step. |
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Vote: | We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems, if only we can find the political will. |
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Vote: | We have to choose between a global market driven only by calculations of short-term profit, and one which has a human face. |
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Vote: | We may have different religions, different languages, different colored skin, but we all belong to one human race. |
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Vote: | We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world's people share the benefits of globalization. |
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Biography
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Kofi Atta Annan (born April 8, 1938) is a Ghanian diplomat and the seventh and current Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Biography Early years and family
Annan was born to Henry Reginald and Victoria Annan on April 8, 1938, in Kumasi, Ghana. His given name means "born on a Friday." Annan was a twin, an occurrence that is regarded as special in Ghanaian culture; his twin sister Efua died in 1991.
Annan's family was part of the country's elite; both of his grandfathers and his uncle were tribal chiefs. His father was half Asante and half Fante; his mother was Fante. Annan's father worked for a long period as an export manager for the Lever Brothers cocoa company.
Annan is married to Nane Maria Annan a Swedish lawyer and artist who is the half-niece of Raoul Wallenberg. Of their three children, Kojo Annan and Ama Annan are from Kofi Annan's previous marriage with Titi Alakija. They divorced in the late 1970s. Their third child, Nina Cronstedt de Groot, is from a previous marriage of Nane Annan. Kojo Annan was in the headlines in 2005 because of his involvement in the Oil for Food program scandal.
Education
From 1954 to 1957, Annan attended the elite Mfantsipim School, a Methodist boarding school in Cape Coast founded in the 1870s. Annan has said that the school taught him "that suffering anywhere concerns people everywhere". In 1957, the year Annan graduated from Mfantsipim, Ghana became the first British colony in Sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence.
In 1958, Annan began studying for a degree in economics at the Kumasi College of Science and Technology, now the University of Science and Technology. He received a Ford Foundation grant, enabling him to complete his undergraduate studies at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States in 1961. Annan then studied at the Graduate Institute of International Studies (Institut universitaire des hautes études internationales IUHEI) in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1961–62, later attending the MIT Sloan School of Management (1971–72) as a Sloan Fellow and receiving a Master of Science degree in management.
Annan is fluent in English, French, Fante and other dialects of Akan, and other African languages.
Early career
Annan started working for the World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations, in 1962. From 1974 to 1976, Annan worked as the Director of Tourism in Ghana.
Following that, he returned to work for the United Nations as an Assistant Secretary-General in three consecutive positions: Human Resources Management and Security Coordinator from 1987 to 1990, Program Planning, Budget and Finance, and Controller from 1990 to 1992, and Peacekeeping Operations from March 1993 to February 1994.
In his book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, ex-General Roméo Dallaire claims that Annan was overly passive in his response to the 1994 Tutsi genocide in Rwanda. He says that Annan, the Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations at that time, held back UN troops from intervening to settle the conflict and from providing more logistic and material support.
Annan was then an Undersecretary-General until October 1995, when he was made a Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the former Yugoslavia, serving for five months in this capacity and returning to his duties as Undersecretary-General in April 1996.
Secretary-General of the United Nations
On December 13, 1996, Annan was selected by the UN Security Council to be Secretary-General and was confirmed four days later by the General Assembly. Annan took the oath of office without delay, starting his first term as Secretary-General on January 1, 1997. Annan replaced outgoing Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, becoming the first person from a black African nation to become Secretary-General.
Annan's Secretary-Generalship was renewed on January 1, 2002, an unusual deviation from informal policy. The office usually rotates around the continents, with two terms each; since Annan's predecessor Ghali was also an African, normally Annan would have only served one term. However, in this case Annan was able to secure reappointment.
In April 2001, the Secretary-General issued a five-point "Call to Action" to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Annan sees this epidemic as his "personal priority" as Secretary-General and in life in general. He proposed the establishment of a Global AIDS and Health Fund to stimulate increased spending needed to help developing countries confront the HIV/AIDS crisis.
On December 10, 2001, Annan and the United Nations jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize, "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world".
Annan was Secretary-General during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and called for the US and UK not to invade without UN support. In 2004 Annan called the invasion and occupation illegal.
In May 2004, Annan was given a copy of the OIOS report. The report found Ruud Lubbers guilty of sexual harassment. (http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=1&story_id=17094&name=UN+report+slams+Lubbers+over+sexual+harassment) However, on July 15, 2004, Lubbers was declared innocent by Kofi Annan. Annan also wrote a letter that some speculate as a threat to the female worker that brought the charges of harassment.
On November 17, 2004, Annan accepted a report clearing UN Under-Secretary-General for Internal Oversight Services Dileep Nair of graft and sexual harassment charges. This action was not viewed favorably by many UN staff, leading to extensive debate on November 19.
In December 2004, United States Republican Senator Norm Coleman called for Annan's resignation after reports surfaced that his son received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna Inspection SA that won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil for Food program. Annan called for an investigation into this matter. The commission, led by Paul Volcker, made no specific allegations in its March 2005 report, stating only that he should have called for investigation earlier. Outside the United States, Annan has few opponents; he has the unanimous support of the UN Security Council.
(http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1142209,0005.htm)
On March 21, 2005, Annan presented a progress report, In Larger Freedom, to the UN General Assembly. Annan recommended Security Council expansion and a host of other UN reforms(http://www.un.org/largerfreedom/).
...(more on Wikipedia)
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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Kofi Annan".
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