Cynics will note that neither Annan nor the organization he heads would have had the chance to receive such a valuable recognition had it not been for September 11, after which the honeymoon between the OUN and the US began.
Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Atta Annan (63) often wakes up at the crack of dawn, but at five in the morning on Friday, September 12, he was woken up by a phone call. "Congratulations," came the voice of his spokesman, Fred Eckhart. The Secretary General has just learned that this year's Nobel Peace Prize went to him and to the world organization as a whole, which he has headed since 1996. "What a wonderful awakening!", said Mr. Kofi Annan. "In the line of business, when your phone rings in the early hours of the morning, you're usually expecting some kind of disaster."
Annan is the second UN Secretary General to receive the prestigious Peace Prize. His predecessor is Norwegian Dag Hammarskjöld, who headed the world organization since 1953, and received the award posthumously in 1961, the same year he died in a traffic accident in the Congo. Certain agencies of the world organization are also Nobel Prize winners; UNHCR in 1954 and 1981; UNICEF in 1965 and UN peacekeeping forces in 1988. But since its establishment after the Second World War, this is the first time that this world organization as a whole has received the prestigious recognition for its contribution to world peace. The amount of 947.000 US dollars will be shared equally by the Secretary General and the organization itself, but the prestige is all the greater because this year the prize is awarded for the hundredth time.
"Clearly emphasizing the United Nations' traditional responsibility for peace and security, he also highlighted the organization's human rights duties." It rose to new challenges such as AIDS and international terrorism, and effectively used the modest resources of the UN," says the official explanation of the decision of the Committee in Oslo headed by Gunnar Berge.
UNBLOCKING: The World Organization was founded immediately after World War II to prevent future wars and to establish rules for the organization of the world and mechanisms for their enforcement. It was established with the aim of maintaining hope in the world that a more orderly and decent global society is possible and to remind us that there are values that should be shared by all people. Many events during more than half a century since the UN has been in existence have made a mockery of the mandate and basic ideas on which the world organization rests. But, with the end of the cold war, the work of the UN was somewhat unblocked and some new opportunities for global cooperation opened up, which Kofi Annan successfully used.
His merits include a more successful fight against poverty, the AIDS epidemic, which is raging in Africa and will take the lives of millions of people in two decades, and the reduction of global pollution. Annan was lucky not to be at the head of the world organization during the bloody wars in Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia; despite successes on the economic, social and environmental fronts, the UN will always be seen through the successes of peacekeeping missions. And it was precisely the role that the UN played in these wars that brought incalculable damage to the world organization, because of whose impotence and in front of whose eyes hundreds of thousands of people were driven to death. And indeed, the news that the UN has won the highest prize for peace leaves a bitter taste in the mouths of the survivors of the genocides in Bosnia and Rwanda. On the other hand, during Annan's mandate, which was extended in June of this year, the UN has taken on unusual new roles in the reconstruction and governance of war-torn societies such as East Timor and Kosovo.
Cynics will note that neither Annan nor the organization he heads would have had the chance to receive such a valuable recognition had it not been for September 11, after which the honeymoon between the OUN and the US began.
Although Mr. Annan can thank the Americans that he found himself at the head of the world organization, because they opposed the extension of the mandate of his predecessor Boutros-Boutros Ghali and made it clear that they would like to see Annan as the secretary general, between the OUN and the USA the cold war reigned. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have tried to show who's boss by refusing to pay a debt of close to a billion dollars, effectively reducing the world organization to a beggar's cane. When in 1998, Kofi Annan suddenly decided to travel to Iraq in an attempt to persuade Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to allow international experts to ensure that Iraq was not producing chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction and thereby prevent military retaliation by the US and UK ( which continues today), then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright literally screamed at him over the phone. On that occasion, she reminded him who he should thank for enjoying the position of "chief and responsible diplomat". The Americans then compared him to Neville Chamberlain, who stood up to Hitler. Friction continued with the Bush administration, which boycotted the Durban summit against racism. However, the tragedy that struck America, but which left consequences for the whole world, forced the American administration to turn to its natural interlocutor - the OUN, in its efforts to create a global coalition in the fight against international terrorism. Annan's involvement has produced various resolutions within Chapter VII of the UN Charter, which characterizes terrorism as a threat to world peace and which automatically obligates member states to fight against this evil. Of course, the debt of the USA was paid under an urgent procedure to the appropriate account of the UN. In the end, President George W. Bush was among the first to congratulate Annan on the prestigious award.
REAL MAN NA by law TO THE PLACE: Regardless of the favorable set of circumstances, the fact remains that of all the post-Cold War secretaries-general of the world organization, Kofi Annan is made of the materials that make him the right man in the right place. This diplomat from his career in the UN, where he spent almost two decades in various jobs, was born in Ghana, in an aristocratic family. He was educated at prestigious schools in Geneva and in the USA, where he specialized in finance and management at the prestigious MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) university. His wife is Nana Wallenberg Annan, the cousin of the famous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who personally saved thousands of Jews during the Second World War, only to end up in a gulag himself.
From his father, he learned the traditional vow of his countrymen: a human being must gather five virtues to become a man. Kofi Atta Annan has many more. Among them are certainly boldness, dignity, courage and a keen sense of morality. The latter, however, would not be a strong enough recommendation for him for the job of a persistent assembler of Lego-blocks of the new world order if he were not also adorned with an exceptional diplomatic skill before which many interlocutors are simply disarmed. "All barriers are falling in front of him," former German chancellor Kohl says of Annan. Richard Holbrooke, until recently the US ambassador to the UN who is not known for his generosity when it comes to compliments and Annan's rival for this year's Nobel Peace Prize, called him a diplomatic rock star. Always impeccably elegant and eloquent, Annan is also known for his exceptional sense of humor. When hundreds of associates met him in front of the entrance to the UN to celebrate the victory, Annan told them: "It is not impossible that we deserve and receive the Nobel Prize again." So, run back to work." It is interesting that the former president of the FRY Slobodan Milošević is among the people who left an influence on the "chief and responsible diplomat". Apart from being amazed by Milosevic's ability to cold-bloodedly inquire about the restaurants in New York that he liked to visit when he was working there as a banker, while at the same time his policies drive people to death, Annan no longer uses the elevator because of Milosevic. He says he was stuck in the elevator for 15 minutes on his way to meet him. "I've been using the stairs ever since," Annan says.
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