Ghanaians farewell Annan
Kofi Annan, the soft-spoken diplomat who served as the first United Nations Secretary-General from sub-Saharan Africa and died last month in Switzerland at 80 after a short illness, was laid to rest in Ghana yesterday.
Annan’s death triggered an outpouring of grief in the West African nation.
More than 6000 mourners attended his funeral at an auditorium in the capital, Accra, and many more gathered outside the venue where traditional drummers and dancers paid tribute.
The service and his burial mark the end of Annan’s three-day state funeral, with citizens, diplomats and traditional leaders filing past his casket this week to bid him farewell. Many commuters in the streets of Accra wore black on their way to work as a sign of respect.
“He brought considerable renown to our country by his position and by his conduct and comportment,” President Nana-Akufo Addo told mourners, who included UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and African leaders such as Liberian President George Weah and Ivory Coast President Alassane Ouattara.
“He gave his life to make peace where there was conflict, to defending the voiceless who were powerless, to promote virtue where there was evil,” Addo said.
Annan devoted almost his entire working life to the UN, steering the organisation through multiple wars in the Middle East, the breakup of former Yugoslavia and a raft of other crises over a career that spanned more than five decades.
He was the co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize, with the UN, to recognise “work for a better organised and more peaceful world”.
His opposition to the Iraq War in 2003 endeared him to anti-war groups and drew sharp criticism from US conservatives.
Annan began his career at the UN as a budget officer in Geneva and rose through the ranks to become head of finance in New York before his appointment as Secretary-General in 1996. He stepped down in 2008.