Remembering Kofi Annan

REGINALD DUMAS

Part 3

MY LAST article examined the setbacks Kofi Annan suffered in the years immediately preceding and following his arrival at the UN secretary-generalship in 1997. In particular, opprobrium had been heaped on him for his alleged passivity during the genocides of Rwanda and Bosnia, and for his apparent naivete in trusting the word of the notoriously untrustworthy Saddam Hussein. The writer David Rieff, for instance, dismissed him as having no moral compass, and sourly predicted that his legacy was “likely to be entirely institutional.”

Then, in a rapid series of bold, pioneering actions, Annan soared above derisiveness like Rieff’s: he began, in essence, to change the world. In 1999, he announced the Global Compact, designed to encourage businesses everywhere to work with UN agencies and civil society in the areas of human rights, labour, the environment and anti-corruption.

In 1999, too, he challenged UN member states to “find common ground … in defence of common humanity.” He threw down the gauntlet again in 2000: “If humanitarian intervention is, indeed, an unacceptable assault on sovereignty, how should we respond to a Rwanda, a Srebenica, to gross and systematic violations of human rights that offend every precept of our common humanity?”

He had been severely diminished by the ethnic cleansings of Rwanda and Srebenica (Bosnia), especially the former, and by the accusation that he had failed in his duty. It was the defining period of his secretary-generalship.

In 2004, on the tenth anniversary of the Rwanda massacre, he would say this: “I believed at that time that I was doing my best. But I realised after the genocide that there was more I could and should have done to sound the alarm and rally support. This painful memory, along with that of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has influenced much of my thinking, and many of my actions, as secretary-general.”

That memory largely accounted both for his appeal to humanitarianism and for the groundbreaking principle the appeal engendered: the responsibility to protect. A UN document explains: “(The) primary responsibility for the protection of its people (rests) first and foremost with the state itself. However, a residual responsibility also (lies) with the broader community of states… (This is) activated when a particular state is clearly either unwilling or unable to fulfil its responsibility to protect or is itself the actual perpetrator of crimes or atrocities.”

In 2000, world leaders, with his guidance, adopted eight 2001/2015 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), now succeeded by 17 Sustainable Development Goals for the period 2016 to 2030. Much progress was made on the MDGs, which included education, gender equality, maternal health etc, but much remains to be done. Just look at the extent of gender inequality in today’s TT.

Annan’s audacious initiatives were manifestly conducing to a much better world, and in 2001 he and the UN received the Nobel Peace Prize. The Nobel Committee praised him for “bringing new life to the (UN)” and for “(emphasising) its obligations (on) human rights… (He) has made clear that sovereignty cannot be a shield behind which member states conceal their violations.” Was Rieff listening?

The year 2002 brought the establishment of the Global Fund against HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis, which he had strongly advocated. The fund is a partnership of governments, civil society, the private sector, and people affected by the diseases. It is estimated to have so far saved more than 22 million lives.

But Annan’s ill-wishers were unrelenting, and it was on the 2003/5 Iraq issues I discussed last week that they convinced themselves they finally had him on the run. They were wrong, again.

In 2005 he unveiled yet another innovation: a Peacebuilding Commission. (“Peacebuilding,” as I point out in my book An Encounter with Haiti, is very different from “peacekeeping.”) That same year produced In Larger Freedom, his five-year report on the MDGs, and in April 2006, a few months before he left office, he published recommendations for a global counter-terrorism strategy.

His New York Times obituary spoke the simple truth: Kofi Annan “redefined the UN.” Both peacemaker and peacebuilder extraordinaire, he was its most visionary secretary-general bar none. Yes, he made mistakes, but he drew enlightenment from them.

The soft-spoken, focused man from Ghana “transformed and protected us,” as his close collaborator and friend, Jeffrey Sachs, put it. “He taught us the inestimable value of diplomacy, the art of finding common ground by listening to and respecting others. There was no finer practitioner of such exalted diplomacy in our time.”

I am honoured to have been Kofi’s friend, and I shall greatly miss him. Well beyond narrow “institutionalism,” and the trumpeted new “patriotism,” the world must build on his considerable legacy of international peace and co-operation.