Seton Hall Magazine, Summer 2001 - TLTC Blogs - Seton Hall ...

Kofi Annan: Bio in Brief
Born in Kumasi, Ghana, in 1938, Kofi
Annan studied at the University of Science
and Technology in Kumasi and in 1961 completed
his undergraduate work in economics
at Macalester College in
St. Paul, Minnesota. In
1961-62, he undertook
graduate studies in economics
at the Institut
universitaire des hautes
études internationales
in Geneva. Annan
received an M.S. in Management from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where
he was a 1971-72 Sloan Fellow.
Since 1997, Annan has served as the
seventh United Nations secretary-general;
he is the first to be chosen from the ranks of
U.N. staff. He has worked for the international
organization since 1962 in a variety of positions,
including assistant-secretary-general
for peacekeeping operations (March 1993-
February 1994) and twice as under-secretarygeneral
(February 1994-October 1995 and
April 1996-December 1996). Annan’s tenure
as under-secretary-general coincided with
unprecedented growth in the size and scope
of U.N. peacekeeping operations: At peak
deployment in 1995, there were almost
70,000 military and civilian personnel from
77 countries.
As secretary-general, Annan’s priorities
have included a comprehensive U.N. reform
program focused on:
© AFP/CORBIS
■ strengthening the U.N’s work in the
areas of development and maintenance
of international peace and security;
■ encouraging and advocating human
rights; the rule of law; and the universal
values of equality, tolerance and human
dignity as found in the U.N. Charter; and
■ restoring public confidence in the organization
by reaching out to new partners
and, in his words, by “bringing the
United Nations closer to the people.”
Annan is credited with helping to resolve
several delicate political situations. These
include staving off U.S. military intervention
by securing Iraq’s concession to weapons
inspection in 1998; a mission in 1998 to
help promote Nigeria’s transition to civilian
rule; an agreement in 1999 to resolve a
stalemate between Libya and the Security
Council over the 1988 Pan Am/Lockerbie
bomb; diplomacy in 1999 to forge an international
response to violence in East Timor;
efforts in 2000 to certify Israel’s withdrawal
from Lebanon; and working to halt the violence
between Israel and the Palestinians.
18 SETON HALL UNIVERSITY MAGAZINE
Seton Hall bestowed on Kofi Annan an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree during his visit.
replace hostility and confrontation
with more discourse and understanding.
He was not alone in his thinking:
On November 13, 2000, the U.N.
General Assembly unanimously
proclaimed 2001 as the United
Nations Year of Dialogue among
Civilizations. Pope John Paul II
praised the decision in his World
Peace Day message on January 1.
“This dialogue is the obligatory path
to the building of a reconciled world,
a world able to look with serenity to
its own future. This is a theme
which is crucial to the pursuit of
peace,” he said.
The Group of Eminent Persons,
which comprises former heads of state
and government, Nobel laureates
and scholars, was created to develop
Italy’s Giandomenico Picco, Annan’s personal
representative, has been intensely involved
with administrators and faculty from the
School of Diplomacy and International
Relations. The School was selected to serve
as the coordinating Secretariat for the United
Nations’ Year of Dialogue Among Civilizations
initiative.
the framework for the Dialogue.
Among its members are the Honorable
Richard von Weizsäcker, former
president of Germany; the Honorable
Jacques Delors, former European
Commission president; the Honorable
Dick Spring, former foreign minister
of Ireland; and Javad Zarif, deputy
foreign minister of Iran. Professors Tu
Wei Ming and Song Jian (China),
Sergei Kapitza (Russia), Hans Küng
(Switzerland), Lourdes Arizpe (Mexico)
and Nobel Laureate Nadine
Gordimer (South Africa) also are part
of this select group.
The group’s first meeting took
place in Vienna in December 2000,
at the invitation of the Austrian government.
In May, Constantinou and
other School of Diplomacy representatives
participated in the second
meeting, hosted in Dublin by the
Irish government. A third meeting is
scheduled for September in Qatar.
During Picco’s February visit to
Seton Hall, he explained how the
Group of Eminent Persons are providing
the Dialogue’s conceptual underpinnings,
concentrating on themes
of inclusion and tolerance. “We are
looking at the Dialogue as the seed
for a new paradigm of international
relations … based on the reassessment
of the concept of enemy, on the
responsibility of the individual as a
key element in our global society and
a search for security through inclusion
rather than exclusion,” he said. Picco
urged that this new approach to global
relations “can only become a reality if
the mindset of perceiving diversity as
a threat is changed.”