Kofi Annan rose from UN budget officer to secretary-general
Kofi Annan's first United Nations job, in 1962, was checking budgets at the World Health Organization in Geneva. Thirty-four years later he became the first secretary-general chosen from the organisation's own staff, after France had vetoed him four times. His name itself records that he was a Friday-born fourth child.
Annan was born in Kumasi, in what was then the Gold Coast, in 1938, one of twins; the middle name Atta, shared with his sister Efua, means twin in Akan. Kofi is the Akan name for a boy born on Friday, and Annan marks a fourth-born child. Both grandfathers and an uncle were Fante paramount chiefs. At Mfantsipim, a Methodist boarding school in Cape Coast, he learned that suffering anywhere concerns people everywhere, and he graduated in 1957, the year Ghana became independent. A Ford Foundation grant took him to Macalester College in Minnesota to finish an economics degree in 1961.
His UN career was built in the back offices: personnel for the refugee agency in Geneva, administrative management in New York, then budget and finance. In 1993 he took over the new peacekeeping department. That period left the heaviest criticism of his career. Roméo Dallaire, commander of the UN force in Rwanda, accused him of being too passive as genocide approached. Annan later argued that the collapse of the Somalia mission had made member states wary of forceful interventions, and that his department could have used the media better to push governments for troops.
When the United States vetoed Boutros Boutros-Ghali's second term in 1996, Annan emerged as the favourite. He took office on 1 January 1997 and quickly issued reform plans, set up a cabinet-style management group, commissioned a review of peace operations and pressed for a larger Security Council, which never came. He campaigned against HIV and AIDS, especially in Africa, and launched the Global Compact with business. In 2001 he and the UN jointly received the Nobel Peace Prize, and he won a second term.
An inquiry into the Oil-for-Food Programme prompted calls for him to resign, though it largely cleared him of personal corruption. After leaving office he founded the Kofi Annan Foundation in 2007 and chaired The Elders, the group started by Nelson Mandela. He died in 2018 and received a state funeral in Ghana.
Source: Kofi Annan
