Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan was Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006, the first to rise from within its own staff and the first from sub-Saharan Africa. Born in Kumasi in the Gold Coast in 1938 into a family of Fante and Ashanti chiefs, he studied at Kumasi and then in the United States on a Ford Foundation grant, and took a master's at MIT. He joined the World Health Organization in 1962 and spent his career in the UN system — budget, personnel, refugees — and headed peacekeeping from 1993. That period included the failures he was afterwards defined by. In 1994 the force commander in Rwanda, Roméo Dallaire, cabled warning of arms caches and plans for extermination; the department instructed him not to raid them and to inform the government. Around 800,000 people were killed. In 1995 Dutch peacekeepers at Srebrenica stood aside while some 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were murdered. Annan commissioned unsparing reports into both and accepted institutional responsibility. As Secretary-General he pressed the argument that sovereignty cannot shield governments that slaughter their own people, which fed into the Responsibility to Protect doctrine adopted in 2005. He launched the Millennium Development Goals, made HIV/AIDS a global priority and helped create the Global Fund, and established the Global Compact with business. He opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq and later called it illegal. The Oil-for-Food inquiry criticised management and his son's conduct while clearing him personally. He shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN. He later mediated Kenya's post-election violence in 2008, and died in 2018.
- Lived: 1938 CE – 2018 CE
- Nationality: Ghanaian
- Roles: UN Secretary-General (1997-2006)
