Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize winner, passed away Saturday after a short illness at age 80. The career diplomat died in hospital in the Swiss city of Bern. He had been living near Geneva for several years. Annan, the only black African to become UN Secretary-General, spent 9 years serving as the world’s top diplomat. He is being remembered as a distinguished, graceful diplomat, and a man who tirelessly championed the cause for world peace. The current UN chief, Antonio Guterres hailed him as “a guiding force for good” and a “proud son of Africa who became a global champion for peace and all humanity.”
“Like so many, I was proud to call Kofi Annan a good friend and mentor. I was deeply honoured by his trust in selecting me to serve as UN High Commissioner for Refugees under his leadership. He remained someone I could always turn to for counsel and wisdom — and I know I was not alone,” Mr. Guterres said in a statement.
A ‘charismatic leader’ dedicated to making the world a better place for all
Credit: UN Photo / UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (second from left) and his wife, Nane Annan, (left) visit the pediatric wing of the Zinder Hospital, Niger in August 2005.
Annan was born into an aristocratic family in Ghana on April 8, 1938. He attended a number of schools and colleges, studying international relations in the United States and Switzerland, and became an international civil servant working for the United Nations in 1962. He went on to become the U.N. secretary-general and later a special envoy to Syria. Annan and the United Nations were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December of 2001 “for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world.”Annan is also known for his opposition to the 2003 invasion of Iraq and to Iran’s nuclear program. He told the BBC in September 2004 that the Iraq war did not conform to the U.N. charter and was illegal. Annan retired on December 31, 2006. Several months prior, he gave a farewell speech to world leaders at U.N. headquarters in New York, outlining major problems with an unjust world economy and widespread contempt for human rights:
“We are not only all responsible for each other’s security,” Annan said in his farewell speech. “We are also, in some measure, responsible for each other’s welfare. Global solidarity is both necessary and possible. It is necessary because without a measure of solidarity no society can be truly stable, and no one’s prosperity truly secure.”
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