UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, has paid tribute to the late former Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, who passed away on Aug. 18, 2018, at the age of 80.
Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for the Secretary-General, remembered the late global icon at a new conference at UN headquarters in New York, on Wednesday.
Dujarric said, “ as some of you know, today marks three years since we lost Kofi Annan, our former secretary-general.
“As the current secretary-general said, Kofi was both one-of-a-kind and one of us, a man who embodied UN values and made all of us proud to call ourselves his colleagues and friends.
“We remember him today and every day.’’
Also, Dujarric said Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said that, on this day three years ago, the world lost one of its ‘moral voices’.
Born in Kumasi, Ghana, on April 8 of 1938, Kofi Annan was the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, serving from 1997 to 2006, and was the first to emerge from the ranks of United Nations staff.
As secretary-general, one of Annan’s main priorities was a comprehensive programme of reform aimed at revitalising the United Nations and making the international system more effective.
He was a constant advocate for human rights, the rule of law, the Millennium Development Goals and Africa, and sought to bring the organisation closer to the global public, by forging ties with civil society, the private sector and other partners.
At Annan’s initiative, UN peacekeeping was strengthened in ways that enabled the United Nations to cope with a rapid rise in the number of operations and personnel.