Kofi Annan

International diplomat Kofi Annan (born 1938) of Ghana is the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations and the first black African to head that organization.

in 1962, Annan started working as a Budget Officer for the World Health Organization, an agency of the United Nations. From 1974 to 1976, he worked as the Director of Tourism in Ghana. Annan then returned to work for the United Nations as an Assistant Secretary-General in three consecutive positions: Human Resources, Management and Security Coordinator, from 1987 to 1990; Program Planning, Budget and Finance, and Controller, from 1990 to 1992; and Peacekeeping Operations, from March 1993 to February 1994.

The chain of events which lead up to the 1994 Rwandan Genocide unfolded while Annan was heading up Peacekeeping Operations. In his book Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda, Canadian ex-General Roméo Dallaire, who was force commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, claims that Annan was overly passive in his response to the incipient genocide. General Dallaire explicitly asserts that Annan held back U. N. troops from intervening to settle the conflict, and from providing more logistical and material support. In particular, Dallaire claims that Annan failed to provide any responses to his repeated faxes asking him for access to a weapons depository, something that could have helped defend the endangered Tutsis. Dallaire concedes, however, that Annan was a man whom he found extremely "committed" to the founding principles of the United Nations.

Annan served as Under-Secretary-General until October 1995, when he was made a Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the former Yugoslavia, serving for five months in that capacity before returning to his duties as Under-Secretary-General in April 1996.

Noted for his cautious, serene style of diplomacy, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan is sometimes criticized for his soft-spokenness, which some say may be mistaken for weakness. But Annan abides by a lesson he learned back in his college days. Unused to the frigid winters of St. Paul, Minnesota, where he studied economics at Macalester College, he took one look at the local students and decided they looked ridiculous in their huge earmuffs. Then he took a walk around campus. When his ears froze, he went out and bought earmuffs. He said of that experience, as noted in U.S. News & World Report, "I learned an important lesson. You never walk into a situation and believe that you know better than the natives. You have to listen and look around.

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