Kofi Annan

Kofi Atta Annan 8 April 1938 18 August 2018 was a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh secretarygeneral of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006 Annan and the UN were the corecipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation as well as chairman of The Elders an international organisation founded by Nelson Mandela Annan joined the United Nations in 1962 working for the World Health Organizations Geneva office He went on to work in several capacities at the UN Headquarters including serving as the undersecretarygeneral for peacekeeping between March 1992 and December 1996 He was appointed secretarygeneral on 13 December 1996 by the Security Council and later confirmed by the General Assembly making him the first officeholder to be elected from the UN staff itself He was reelected for a second term in 2001 and was succeeded as secretarygeneral by Ban Kimoon in 2007 As secretarygeneral Annan reformed the UN bureaucracy worked to combat HIVAIDS especially in Africa and launched the UN Global Compact He was criticised for not expanding the Security Council and faced calls for his resignation after an investigation into the OilforFood Programme but was largely exonerated of personal corruption After the end of his term as secretarygeneral he founded the Kofi Annan Foundation in 2007 to work on international development In 2012 Annan was the UNArab League Joint Special Representative for Syria to help find a resolution to the Syrian civil war Annan quit after becoming frustrated with the UNs lack of progress with regards to conflict resolution In September 2016 Annan was appointed to lead a UN commission to investigate the Rohingya crisis He died in 2018 and was given a state funeral Description above from the Wikipedia article Kofi Annan licensed under CCBYSA full list of contributors on Wikipedia