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Annan offers global perspective
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“You must constantly look outward, beyond the boundaries of your community and your country.”
It was a speech tailored for a university that places a premium on global perspectives and houses one of the largest populations of international students among universities in the United States.
Before a large crowd in Alumni Arena last night, former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan delivered a lecture on advancing peace and prosperity in a world where each person’s fate is increasingly tied to that of all others. His wide-ranging talk, the first in this year’s Distinguished Speakers Series, touched on Iraq and Rwanda, the H1N1 flu and the economic crisis. Despite his somber tone, the message Annan conveyed was one of hope: Individuals and institutions, no matter how small, can make a difference in the lives of people thousands of miles away.
“My young friends, the education you are receiving here at UB is a privilege,” Annan told students. “It is a responsibility to use your talent and energy to improve our world. The events of the past year have underlined how small our planet has become and how, wherever we live, our futures are now so closely interlinked.
“Your decisions and actions can have an impact, for good or bad, on people (on) the other side of the planet,” he added. “You must constantly look outward, beyond the boundaries of your community and your country.”
Annan, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the U.N. in 2001, is chancellor of the University of Ghana and chair of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which works to revitalize small-scale farming in Africa. In two terms as secretary-general, from 1997 to 2006, Annan fought HIV/AIDS and other diseases, persuaded the U.N. to establish intergovernmental bodies promoting peace and welfare, and played a key role in laying out Millennium Development Goals, such as reducing hunger and poverty, and providing all children with a primary education.
Yesterday at UB, he arrived on stage to a standing ovation. He opened his talk by explaining that people of one country cannot afford to ignore the welfare of those of another in a world where diseases, such as the H1N1 flu, can travel across oceans; an American sub-prime mortgage crisis can lead to worldwide economic turmoil; and failed states can serve as havens for terrorists. Problems from climate change to genocide are global, he said.
Dressed in a charcoal gray suit, Annan outlined five principles he believes could better the world: collective responsibility among the world’s peoples for their mutual security; global solidarity, or giving all people an opportunity to share in wealth; the rule of law and respect for human rights as a way to advance security and prosperity; mutual accountability for actions among nations; and multilateralism—the use of international bodies to promote peace and give a voice to developing countries in international affairs.
“We have certainly made great strides toward them in my lifetime, but much remains to be done to put those five principles into practice,” Annan told students. “It is your generation who must pick up the challenge from people like me.
“The way you respond to the challenges I outlined will decide the health and happiness of billions of people across the world,” he said. “It is a big responsibility. It is your world now. You must have the courage to change it and shape it for the better.”
Some of the night’s most poignant moments took place during a 45-minute question-and-answer session after Annan had completed his speech. Questioners ranged from community members to students from Western New York, Istanbul and Munich.
One attendee asked whether the U.N. had “failed” in Rwanda, where an estimated 800,000 people died during a 1994 genocide. At one point during the killings, the U.N., with Annan heading peacekeeping operations, had just 250 troops in Rwanda. Annan, with white hair and long wrinkles creasing his forehead, recalled, in a deep and raspy voice, how one U.N. commander informed him that, “If I had 5,000 men, I would have made a difference.”
“Yes, the U.N. failed,” Annan said. “But as a broader U.N.—not the U.N. as a secretariat, but its member states as well.”
Asked what he would consider the best and worst aspects of working at the U.N., Annan replied that winning the Nobel Peace Prize was a highlight, and that, “My worst moment was when we couldn’t stop the war in Iraq.”
The night’s last question came from someone who wanted to know, “What is the one thing that each of us can do to promote that hope, that dream, of peace?”
Annan”s response: Begin with tolerance.
“When we are told thousands and thousands are hungry and dying, we have a feeling that we are helpless—What can I do in the face of such a huge problem?” Annan said. “But if you were to remember that it always begins with an individual, even genocide begins with an individual. …If we can do something to help an individual, or sometimes just raise our voice—‘We can’t take this anymore, stop’—engage, be tolerant and have empathy, I think that is what I would recommend. And that is something all of us have in us to do if we try hard enough.”
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