Politics
Kofi Annan
UN Secretary-General 1997–2006, Nobel Peace Prize 2001
Born 1938 · Died 2018
Photo: US Mission in Geneva · Public domain
«Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.»
Kofi Annan of Ghana was the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations and the first to rise from within its own staff. He and the UN shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize; he led the organisation through the Iraq war era and launched the Millennium Development Goals.
Key achievements
- Seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, 1997–2006
- Nobel Peace Prize, 2001, shared with the UN
- Launched the Millennium Development Goals
Universities
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Sloan Fellow, 1971–72; MS in management while on leave from the United Nations.
Facts
- He came to MIT in 1971 as a Sloan Fellow, aged 33 and already a UN official, and left a year later with a master's degree in management.
- He joined the UN in 1962 as a budget officer at the World Health Organization in Geneva and spent almost his entire career inside the organisation.
- After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 he negotiated the release of some 900 UN staff and Western nationals held in the country.
- The 2001 Nobel citation praised him and the UN for their work for a better organised and more peaceful world.
Photographs
Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences; the author and licence are shown on each image.