Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan
Kofi Atta Annanis a Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations from January 1997 to December 2006. Annan and the United Nations were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world." He is the founder and the Chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as being the chairman of The Elders, a group founded by Nelson Mandela...
NationalityGhanaian
ProfessionPolitician
Date of Birth8 April 1938
CityKumasi, Ghana
CountryGhana
Women themselves have the right to live in dignity, in freedom from want and freedom from fear. On this International Women's Day, let us rededicate ourselves to making that a reality.
We have to choose between a global market driven only by calculations of short-term profit, and one which has a human face.
The global work of the United Nations is not without reason compared to that of a family - striving for a common goal in concert with all members for a better future.
We shall not defeat any of the infectious diseases that plague the developing world until we have also won the battle for safe drinking water, sanitation, and basic health care.
There can be no doubt that these attacks are deliberate acts of terrorism, carefully planned and coordinated and as such I condemn them utterly. Terrorism must be fought resolutely wherever it appears.
The United Nations, whose membership comprises almost all the states in the world, is founded on the principle of the equal worth of every human being.
Open markets offer the only realistic hope of pulling billions of people in developing countries out of abject poverty, while sustaining prosperity in the industrialized world.
No nation can make itself secure by seeking supremacy over all others. We all share responsibility for each other's security, and only by working to make each other secure can we hope to achieve lasting security for ourselves.
Microfinance recognizes that poor people are remarkable reservoirs of energy and knowledge, posing an untapped opportunity to create markets, bring people in from the margins and give them the tools with which to help themselves.
We have the means and the capacity to deal with our problems, if only we can find the political will.
Children are our future and if we use them in battle, we are destroying the future. We must reclaim them, every one of them, one at a time.
The war on drugs has failed in West Africa and around the world
The international community . . . allows nearly 3 billion people almost half of all humanity to subsist on $2 or less a day in a world of unprecedented wealth.
Let us choose to unite the power of markets with the authority of universal ideals. Let us choose to reconcile the creative forces of private entrepreneurship with the needs of the disadvantaged and the requirements of future generations.