10 Jan 2007 |
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Kofi Annan, whose 10-year tenure as Secretary General of the United Nations has now ended deserves high commendation and the gratitude of the peoples of the world for the commitment, passion and diligence that he demonstrated in using the apparatus of the UN, to remind the whole world of the indivisibility of humanity, the common bond that human races share and the collective task of making the world a better and safer place for all.
As Kofi Annan goes into retirement, he leaves behind a mixed but distinguished legacy; he was a true symbol of the UN’s ideals, a passionate defender and promoter of those ideals, a bold and fearless spokesman for the interests of the peoples of the world. Annan will remain a source of pride to his native Ghana, to the African continent, to black people all over the world, and to the UN bureaucracy and its 61-year old cultures and traditions, of which he was a product and later, apostle. Annan had a most difficult job, perhaps the most difficult job in the world. Simple, soft-spoken and an astute diplomat, he loved to carry himself like a President, the President of the world, he was an international statesman and civil servant, under whose jurisdiction the whole world fell, but he was the archetype of the servant as a leader, and this was a role that he played with great resolve and humility.
Annan was responsible to 192 Heads of state, they all needed him and his office for one reason or the other at different times or almost simultaneously. He bore the pressures that came his way with grace, showing little signs of strain. He had been described as the “secular Pope”, and this was in many ways quite true. He was a General who did not necessarily possess the powers to send troops to the field; he had to refer to his many bosses who constantly reminded him that he was their Secretary. He was the Secretary who was constantly aware of his historic role as servant and leader.
While accepting the Nobel Peace Prize which had been awarded jointly to him and the United Nations in December 2001, Annan had spoken of the third millennium, as the equivalent of a trip through “the gates of fire”. He led the nations of the world under the banner of the United Nations through that “fire”, taking the heat most of the times, and having to provide a sense of balance and moral compassion even when some of the states of the world chose to treat the United Nations with askance. As Annan steps into a new year and a new life, his voice will continue to ring true on the many lofty issues and ideals that he championed; we pay tribute to this outstanding personality, and celebrate him as Man of the Year 2006, in our estimation, the greatest UN Secretary General since Dag Hamarskoldj; one of the greatest living Africans of our time, a true ambassador.
Born on April 8, 1938, in Kumasi, Ghana, Kofi Annan assumed office as Secretary General of the United Nations on January 1, 1997. He was appointed on the recommendation of the Security Council, in the General Assembly, by acclamation and without any dissenting voice, a clear indication of Annan’s popularity, to a second term of office which began on January 1, 2002; this ended on December 31, 2006. He was the seventh Secretary General of the United Nations, the first sub-Saharan African to occupy that position and the first Secretary General to be elected from the ranks of UN staff. Annan was Secretary General at a trying period in world history with all forms of crises, political, and ethnic, religious and humanitarian, developmental and geographical showing up in different sections of the map, with the UN feeling compelled to play a major role as an arbiter of peace, and stabilising force. From Darfur, to Congo, Yugoslavia, Iran, Iraq, the Middle East, North Korea, Somalia, to Sierra Leone, Liberia, Haiti, Nigeria, the world simply shook to its fundaments, and it is a troubled world still, the morning after Annan’s departure.
In the face of this, Kofi Annan was constantly on the road to remind warring parties, the world’s poor and disaffected, and the unconcerned rich about the need to preserve the common dignity of the human person. Kofi Annan was Secretary General at a time when the relevance and powers of the United Nations were constantly challenged by premium world powers which chose to act unilaterally, but he was a courageous Secretary General who was never afraid to speak the truth to power, quietly but effectively, since in any case, he remained stubborn in the defence of his own convictions.
Kofi Annan was Secretary General at a time when the gap between the world’s rich and poor continued to widen, with the sharp disparities creating tension and unease in international diplomatic and human relations; Annan was on the side of the poor, reminding the rich of the need to address the development needs of the poor, and give them a voice in order to guarantee world peace. Annan, indeed was Secretary General at a time when the world was most insecure; but, always, he insisted on the values of global peace and security. The cold war may have ended, but the challenges of being human and a united world have remained daunting in the last ten years and beyond. Annan demonstrated an understanding of the issues that was striking in its purposefulness; he applied a common touch that bore the imprints of charisma; and on development issues, he was an activist and a prophet.
His tenure was however controversial. His monotonous insistence on principles and ideals and values, and his unrelenting optimism about the relevance of the UN, brought him into conflict and earned him not a few flaks from constituencies that had a different agenda from that of the UN. His American critics protested about what they labeled “his anti-Americanism and arrogance”. Annan’s relationship with the United States is especially an important aspect of his tenure, which is both a comment on the American foreign relations process and his own character.
Annan became Secretary General, in part because he enjoyed the support of the Americans who were no longer enthusiastic about Annan’s predecessor, the Arab North African Secretary General, Boutros Boutros Ghali of Egypt who cultivated an aloof style which infuriated the Americans and alienated other parties. America which contributes 22 per cent of the UN budget, has never hidden its determination to rule the United Nations, and dictate to it if it would be allowed to do so, and it is in part for this reason that there is an undue obsession with the United States in UN affairs. Kofi Annan had the right credentials. He completed his undergraduate studies at Macalester College in St. Paul Minnesota on a Ford Foundation Grant. He is also a product of the MIT Sloan School of Management and a friend of the Rockefeller Foundation: someone who would understand the American perspective; in addition, an experienced UN insider. Indeed, in his first term, Annan and the Americans were the best of friends. But the parting of ways came on the question of Iraq. America had acted unilaterally in attacking Iraq after September 11, an action which Kofi Annan boldly described on BBC as “illegal”.
American critics accuse Annan of having once described Saddam Hussein as a “man with whom he could do business”, but Kofi Annan’s point is that America’s unilateralism cannot and must not replace multilateralism and the need for diplomacy in a world that is seeking to expand the coast of peace. Saddam Hussein was hanged the other day, as Annan began to pack his belongings out of Sutton Place, his official residence in New York, but in no way has America’s original sin against the UN brought peace and stability to that country where there are no “bouquet of flowers” to be seen on the streets, only continuing death and destruction. In his relationship with the United States or other world powers, Annan always proved that he was his own man; that he understood his mandate, even on those occasions when he was accused of using his position to speak on behalf of members of the UN, he refused to be intimidated.
In a valedictory speech delivered at the Truman Presidential Library in Missouri, December 11, Annan put his courage and optimism about the UN again on display when he railed against America’s isolationism and the Bush administration. He noted that “no nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others”. He added that America’s position in the “vanguard of the global human rights movement can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism. When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends are naturally troubled and confused”. In the same speech, Annan told the Americans: that “no nation can make its own actions legitimate in the eyes of others. When power, especially military force is used, the world will consider it legitimate only when convinced that it is being used for the right purpose – for broadly shared aims – in accordance with broadly accepted norms.” It was such courage and forthrightness as this that characterised everything else that Kofi Annan did as Secretary General.
His critics further accused him of running a UN bureaucracy that was riddled with scandal and corruption, a UN with the worst scandals in history. There were cases involving his chief of staff, Iqbal Riza who was accused of collecting kickbacks; Vladimir Kutzetsov, head of the UN budget oversight committee, Ruud Lubbers, head of the UN High Commission for Refugees who was accused of sexual harassment and abuse of office, Alexander Yakovlev, a procurement official, and the UN Human Rights Commission which was criticised for gross inefficiency and which had to be transformed by Annan into the UN Human Rights Council. But perhaps the biggest case in this regard was the Oil for Food scandal in which Kojo, the Secretary General’s son, was said to have obtained payments and a discounted Mercedes Benz and that Annan had knowledge of this although he had originally denied ever meeting with Cotecna officials until he was confronted with the evidence.
These assaults on Annan’s integrity did not entirely damage him, there were investigations including panels set up by the US Department of Justice, he himself willingly submitted his office to investigations, but the general assumption was that Annan was being hounded because of an organized political agenda against the UN. The irony is that Annan had in fact come into office as a candidate for reform and in his early years in office, he launched a far-reaching comprehensive reform programme titled “Renewing the United Nations”; this was followed up with other policy proposals including “In Larger Freedom” (2005), “Investing in the United Nations: For a stronger Organisation worldwide” (2006) and “Development as One” (2006) which contain recommendations on how to modernise and streamline the operations of the UN, cut down on duplication; eliminate redundancies and improve the organisation’s level of efficiency. Annan also wanted to expand the Security Council in order to make it more open and accessible. This reform programme did not achieve much success not because of Mr. Annan’s own inattentiveness but because of the lack of commitment on the part of the same vested interests which opposed him.
Thirdly, Mr Annan was criticised and indeed held personally responsible for the failures of the UN in making a difference in Rwanda in 1994 where 800, 000 Tutsis were slaughtered, and Srebrenica where 7, 000 Muslim Bosnians were massacred, and the failure so far of the UN to contain the genocide in Darfur. It is again an unfair criticism. Annan was no saint though; he allowed his hands to be tied in too many cases, and he ended up taking the blame for nonfeasance. But this was the special burden of his office. Every major crisis in the world eventually ended up at his doorstep and as the face of the UN, he was the target of anger, the scapegoat for other people’s problems. The cumulative effect is that Annan is leaving behind a mixed legacy,
Shimon Peres has said of him: “Life is made of things that we are forced to do and things that we are free to do. And if we judge you not by the things that you were forced but by the things that you were free to do, you were a wonderful human being”. In a homage paid to him on December 29, French President Jacques Chirac described him as a “servant of peace on all the continents…over the past ten years, you have incarnated the best of what the organisation can give the world.” Prime Minister Jose Ramos Horta of East Timor has described Annan as “a friend of the people of Timor-Leste” in acknowledgement of his personal and official role in ensuring the independence of East Timor from Indonesian occupation in 1999. Sepp Blatter, the President of the international football association, FIFA, has praised him for the “principles of your action, the vision of your leadership and the humanity of your person”.
These are the exact qualities for which Annan will be remembered for a long time to come. In his Truman Library valedictory speech, he had spoken about the five lessons he learnt in the course of his tenure as UN leader: it was a restatement of the hallowed principles of the United Nations and the road map, as well as the underlying philosophy of his own stewardship: his vision of a world in which every nation looks out for the other, shared responsibility for each other’s welfare, respect for human rights and the rule of law, good governance and political accountability and the need to preserve and strengthen multilateral institutions, and make them useful to the world’s marginalised and impoverished groups. What we celebrate is Annan’s example of purposefulness. His passion about the United Nations may have been on account of his being an insider, but it was also about his own person and faith.
Before becoming Secretary General, Annan had served the United Nations in various capacities since 1962 save for a brief period, 1974 to 1976, when he worked in Ghana as Director of Tourism. He joined the World Health organization as a Budget Officer in 1962. When he returned to the UN system in 1976, he later occupied the position of an Assistant Secretary General in different divisions: Human Resources Management and Security Coordinator (1987 – 1990), Controller, Programme Planning, Budget and Finance (1990 -1992), and controller in charge of Peacekeeping Operations (1993 -1994). He served as Under Secretary-General to Boutros Boutros Ghali until October 1995, and was soon appointed the Secretary General’s Special Representative to the former Yugoslavia.
His understanding of the UN bureaucracy and of the organisation’s major concerns offered him more advantages than liabilities and enabled him to communicate his vision of the United Nations through programmes, statements, policy reforms and proposals, symbolisms and gestures, far more clearly, and perhaps also more vigorously, than any other Secretary General before him. It had been said earlier that he spoke on behalf of the world’s poor, the point is worth repeating that Annan brought the United Nations closer to the common peoples of the world, and reminded others of their responsibility to make the world more united. He was passionate about those development issues which had brought much sorrow to the world, and hence he pushed the envelope of the UN Millenium Development Goals with an emphasis on the empowerment of people and the restoration of dignity.
The UN under his watch was concerned about the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger, access to basic education, promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of women, reduction of child mortality, improvement of maternal healthcare, HIV/AIDS scourge and other diseases such as malaria, environmental sustainability, and development of global partnership; promotion of human rights and good governance by states and their leaders. The emphasis on partnership was particularly important to him as he sought to involve the private sector and the civil society in the UN’s programmes as agents of development. He travelled tirelessly to troubled spots of the world; he was a hard and determined negotiator for peace, be it in Darfur or Kosovo. He called for an end to the reign of impunity and respect for human rights and the rule of law. He played a leading role in the on-going combat against international terrorism. At every turn, he canvassed the vision of a world that would be free from fear, want and indignity.
The entire world was his office but Kofi Annan by the fact of his extraction and natural affinity helped to draw significant attention to the African continent. He was not just our ambassador on the world stage. He was one of the staunchest critics of the crisis of leadership in Africa and a solicitor of help for a continent that is in need. During the years of military rule in Nigeria, specifically under the reign of General Sani Abacha, Kofi Annan was one of the clearest voices from the international arena calling for respect for due process, the rule of law and democracy by the Nigerian authorities. When Chief MKO Abiola was detained by the Abacha government, Annan visited him in prison and pleaded his case without appearing to be interfering in Nigerian affairs. He has also been most vocal on the crisis in Darfur. Africa’s developmental crisis brought Kofi Annan much embarrassment. “Today”, he once declared, “one thing is clear to all of us here: Africa’s development disproves the distorted and widespread image of continent as a sea of undifferentiated poverty.” In his interactions with African leaders, he was a quiet moral voice, even if he could have encouraged the United Nations to do a lot more for Africa.
Annan’s departure from the United Nations Secretariat, is also significantly a moment of truth. He will be returning to an African continent that is still in the throes of extreme poverty and despair. He is also leaving behind, a world that is no more united than when he became Secretary General. He was forthright enough to admit this much in his farewell address to the UN General Assembly on September 19 when he admitted with humility that not much has changed in the world; the three major problems of “an unjust economy, world disorder and widespread contempt for human rights and the rule of law have not resolved but sharpened”. The world truly is still a troubled place with crisis in Africa, the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula and the world’s poor still divided by the factors of religion, ethnicity and deprivation.
In 2001, at the Nobel Lecture, Annan had defined the challenges of the future as follows: “eradicating poverty, preventing conflict, and promoting democracy. Only in a world that is rid of poverty can all men and women make the most of their abilities. Only where individual rights are respected can differences be channeled politically and resolved peacefully. Only in a democratic environment, based on respect for diversity and dialogue, can individual self-expression and self-government be secured and freedom of association be upheld.” Those words were true then as they are now. The South Korean former Foreign Minister and Annan’s successor, Ban Ki-Moon has his job cut out for him. It is now his call to take the world through the “gates of fire”, and to address the issues before the United Nations, this must include the comprehensive reform of the United Nations itself, including the Security Council in order to reposition the UN properly at the heart of the multilateral system, a task that Annan could not complete. Annan’s pragmatism on the eve of his departure is not necessarily an expression of regret but a reminder of how much more still needs to be done. History will be much kinder to him..
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