Liaison Newsletter > LIAISON Vol. 1, No. 2, March 1997 - Articles

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Kofi Annan: a new kind of Secretary General

When Kofi Annnan of Ghana was finally confirmed unanimously by members of the Security Council on December 13th and by the General Assembly on December 17th, the mould at the UN was broken. Never before has a Secretary-General been drawn from the bureaucracy itself. His predecessors were either diplomats or politicians in their own governments.

In these days of intense focus (albeit mainly from the United States) on the efficiency of the UN and the need for comprehensive UN reform, perhaps a good bureaucrat, steeped in UN machinery including its administrative budgetary and personal aspects as well as its most visible programme aspects (peacekeeping), is exactly what the UN needs as it begins its second fifty years.

His election was by no means simple. His predecessor, Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt, kept his name in the running until the very last moment, despite the public determination of the United States to veto his nomination in the Security Council. When it was agreed that Africa should have the second five years denied to Boutros-Ghali (the practice has been to rotate the Secretary-Generalship through the major regions), and when the Africans proposed four names, France then threatened to veto Kofi Annan, not so much because his French was "quite satisfactory", as they said, but because they stubbornly refused to relinquish their support of Boutros-Ghali. Eventuallly, the French were persuaded by the otherwise unanimous support for Annan, and they joined the movement for his acclamation.

Kofi Annan was born 58 years ago in Ghana (in his tribe all male children born on Friday are called Kofi). He studied at the University of Science and Technology at Kumasi and completed his undergraduate work in economics at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. He undertook graduate studies in economics at the Institut universitaire de hautes études internationales in Geneva, and from 1971-72 was a Sloan Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received a Master of Science degree in Management.

Over a period of thirty years, he was moved up through the ranks at the UN with a reputation for intelligence, fairness and effectiveness in difficult posts such as personnel, finance and budgetary matters, and finally peacekeeping operations. His quiet, urbane and courteous exterior has made him a popular "comer" among UN staff and diplomats alike.
On his election, he announced that his three immediate priorities would be: 1) to go to Washington to try to accelerate the payment of US arrears; 2) to "open up" the UN, both within the Secretariat and by the empowerment of outside groups such as non-governmental organizations to play a greater role in UN governance, and 3) to implement UN reform quickly and effectively.

One of his first moves was to appoint Maurice Strong of Canada as Executive Coordinator for UN Reform. Strong has become almost deputy Secretary-General, with broad powers to implement fundamental reform throughout the UN system.

Angus Archer, now Director of Development at the United Nations Association in Canada (Ottawa), was Coordinator of the UN and Non-Governmental Liaison Service in New York for 15 years. He was a neighbour of Kofi Annan on Roosevelt Island and worked with him on several NGO events in North America and Europe.