Former UN chief Kofi Annan dies at 80
Accra/ Geneva, Aug. 18: Former UN SecretaryGeneral and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kofi Annan died on Saturday at the age of 80, his foundation said, after decades of championing efforts to try to end protracted conflicts in Africa, Asia and the Middle East. Annan, a Ghanaian national, died in hospital in Bern, Switzerland, in the early hours, his close associates said. In Geneva, the Kofi Annan Foundation announced his peaceful death after a short undisclosed illness with “immense sadness”, saying he was surrounded in his last days by his second wife Nane and children Ama, Kojo and Nina.
After rising through the ranks of the UN, Annan served two terms as UN secretary- general in New York from 1997- 2006 and retired to live in a Swiss village in the Geneva countryside. “In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations. He rose through the ranks to lead the organisation into the new millennium with matchless dignity and determination,” UN secretary- general Antonio Guterres, whom Annan had chosen to head the UN refugee agency, said in a statement. Annan and the UN shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for efforts to reform the world body and give priority to human rights issues.
As head of UN peacekeeping operations, Annan was criticised for the world body’s failure to halt the genocide in Rwanda in the 1990s. As UN boss, he was linked to peace efforts to reunite the divided island of Cyprus, submitting a reunification blueprint which was rejected in a referendum by Greek Cypriots in 2004.
South African archbishop Desmond Tutu, described Annan as “an outstanding human being who represented our continent and the world with enormous graciousness, integrity and distinction.” Born in Kumasi, the capital city of Ghana’s Ashanti region, Annan devoted four decades of his working life to the UN.
Annan opposed USled invasion of Iraq and later quit as UN’s 1st envoy at the start of Syria war. Accusing world powers of failing to fulfil commitments, he said, ‘ I lost my troops on the way to Damascus.’