EX-UN BOSS KOFI ANNAN DIES, AGED 80
>> NEW YORK: Kofi Annan, the soft-spoken Ghanaian diplomat who served as the first United Nations secretary-general from subSaharan Africa, has died.
Annan died yesterday after an unspecified short illness, according to a statement from his family and the Kofi Annan Foundation. He was 80. “Kofi Annan was a global statesman and a deeply committed internationalist who fought throughout his life for a fairer and more peaceful world,” the statement said.
Annan devoted almost his entire working life to the UN, navigating through multiple wars in the Middle East, t he Balkan breakup, African genocides and a raft of other crises over a career that spanned more than five decades.
He was the co-recipient, along with the UN, of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, to recognise “work for a better organised and more peaceful world.” His opposition to the Iraq War in 2003 endeared him to antiwar groups and drew sharp criticism from US conservatives, including John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the UN who became national security adviser to President Donald Trump.
Although broadly admired as a bureaucratic reformer and quiet insider, Annan was often assailed as ineffective. He was criticised for his handling of UN peacekeeping operations at the time of the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis in 1994 and the killing of Muslims from the Bosnian town of Srebrenica the following year. His reputation was tainted further by a corruption scandal that touched his family and a failure to help resolve the Syrian crisis in 2012, when it was in its infancy.
“A lot of his time as secretary-general was devoted to redeeming both the UN’s battered reputation and his own,” said Richard Gowan, a fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Annan and his advisers managed to nurse UN operations back to life, and launch new blue missions in trouble spots like Congo and Liberia. If Annan hadn’t pushed the UN back into peacekeeping in Africa, the organisation would be even less credible in global security than it is today.”
Following his two terms as secretarygeneral, Annan became a member of “The Elders,” an elite group of retired liberal leaders who try to resolve conflicts around the world through informal counsel.
>> GENEVA: Kofi Annan, one of the world’s most celebrated diplomats and a charismatic symbol of the United Nations, died at the age of 80 yesterday.
His foundation announced his death in Switzerland yesterday in a tweet, saying that he died after a short unspecified illness.
“Wherever there was suffering or need, he reached out and touched many people with his deep compassion and empathy,’’ the foundation said in a statement.
Annan spent virtually his entire career as an administrator in the United Nations. His aristocratic style, cool-tempered elegance and political savvy helped guide his ascent to become its seventh secretary-general, and the first hired from within. He served two terms from Jan 1, 1997, to Dec 31, 2006, capped nearly mid-way when he and the UN were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2001.
During his tenure, Annan presided over some of the worst failures and scandals at the world body, one of its most turbulent periods since its founding in 1945. Challenges from the outset forced him to spend much of his time struggling to restore its tarnished reputation.
His enduring moral prestige remained largely undented, however, both through charisma and by virtue of having negotiated with most of the powers in the world.
When he departed from the United Nations, he left behind a global organisation far more aggressively engaged in peacekeeping and fighting poverty, setting the framework for the UN’s 21st-century response to mass atrocities and its emphasis on human rights and development.
“Kofi Annan was a guiding force for good,’’ current UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said. “It is with profound sadness that I learned of his passing. In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations. He rose through the ranks to lead the organization into the new millennium with matchless dignity and determination.’’
Even out of office, Annan never completely left the UN’s orbit. He returned to the agency in special roles, including as the UN-Arab League’s special envoy to Syria in 2012. He remained a powerful advocate for global causes through his eponymous foundation.
Annan took on the top UN post six years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and presided during a decade when the world united against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks — then divided over the US-led war against Iraq. The US relationship tested him as a world diplomatic leader.
“I think that my darkest moment was the Iraq war, and the fact that we could not stop it,’’ Annan said in a February 2013 interview with Time magazine to mark the publication of his memoir, Interventions: A Life in War and Peace.’
“I worked very hard — I was working the phone, talking to leaders around the world. The US did not have the support in the Security Council,’’ Annan recalled in the videotaped interview posted on The Kofi Annan Foundation’s website.
Annan is survived by his wife and three children. Funeral arrangement weren’t immediately announced.