Annan, Kofi (1938– )

Ghanaian diplomat, secretary general of the United Nations (UN) 1997–2006. Heading the peacekeeping department of the UN from 1993, he oversaw its peacekeeping operations in Somalia from 1993 and in Bosnia-Herzegovina from 1995. He was re-elected in 2001. In the same year, he shared the 2001 Nobel Prize for Peace with the UN itself. He was censured, however, by an independent UN inquiry in 1999 for his failure as head of peacekeeping to stop the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

During the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Annan called on the USA and the UK not to invade without the support of the United Nations.

Annan was born in Kumasi, Ghana; both of his grandfathers were Fante tribal chiefs, part of Ghana's elite. He studied at colleges in Ghana, the USA, and Switzerland, and went on to become a diplomat after joining the World Health Organization (WHO) in 1962. He gained a management degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1972. He was elected secretary general of the UN after the USA vetoed the re-election of his predecessor, the Egyptian diplomat and politician Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Known for his commitment to the principles of the UN and his work for human rights, he negotiated in 1998 an agreement with Iraq to allow UN inspectors unrestricted access to supposed chemical and biological weapon sites.