Kofi Annan’s legacy lives on at the UN
His focus of fighting for equality and rights is a big part of the world body’s agenda
Kofi Annan left the United Nations far more committed than it had been to combating poverty, promoting equality and fighting for human rights.
Until his death at age 80 at the weekend he was pushing for nations to work together to solve problems and worried about nationalism.
As Secretary-General of the UN from 1997 to 2006, Annan saw as his greatest achievements the programmes and policies he put in place to reduce inequality within and between countries, to combat infectious diseases and to promote rights and protect civilians from war crimes.
He launched the UN Millennium Development Goals in 2000 to cut extreme poverty by half, promote equality for women, ensure every child has a primary school education, reduce maternal and child mortality, and halt the spread of Aids by 2015.
Those goals — only a few of which were fully achieved — were succeeded by an expanded list of UN Sustainable Development Goals for 2030 that adds issues such as climate action, affordable and clean energy, and promoting peace and justice. The updated list is a major focus of the UN’s current agenda.
As UN peacekeeping chief just before becoming Secretary-General, Annan shared blame for the failure of UN troops he deployed to prevent the genocides in Rwanda in 1994 and in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in July 1995.
When he became UN chief, Annan launched a doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” to prevent governments and leaders from massacring their own people. At a summit in 2005, over objections from some countries, 191 nations endorsed what has become known as the “responsibility to protect” civilians. This doctrine is frequently cited but not often implemented.
Annan also saw as a major achievement the expansion of the UN’s work into partnerships with businesses, foundations, universities and civil society. This led, for example, to the Global Compact in 2001 where Annan asked corporate leaders to publicly commit to 10 principles in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption. More than 9000 of the world’s leading CEOs have joined the compact.
Annan said in May 2017 that he was worried about lost jobs and said many people worldwide had lost trust in political and corporate leaders and feared being left behind.
Mainstream leaders had to explain that innovation and artificial intelligence are taking away jobs and tell those who have lost jobs they are going to be retrained for the new economy that’s coming. “If we don’t encourage leaders, first of all fresh people, to go into politics and we don’t encourage the leaders to lead, we will create a situation which is normal. When leaders fail to lead, the people lead and make them follow. But you don’t know where they’re going to lead you to.”
He also said President Donald Trump’s go-it-alone foreign policy is weakening the US, and stressed the importance of multilateralism and the perils of nationalism.