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News

Annan calls for unity

Former U.N. head says much money is needed to fight global ills 
at Monday's talk

by JOHN ARTERBURY
The Daily Cougar

Kofi Annan said Monday evening that the people of the world must unite to combat the proliferation of war, poverty and disease.

The Ghana-born diplomat, who served as the secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2005, said at the Hobby Center that ordinary individuals, philanthropists and private organizations need to cooperate in order to guarantee a sustainable future for subsequent generations. 

"I hope you are participating in your community. You can make a difference," Annan said. "Global citizenship begins at home."

Annan's outlook was shaped during his primary education in Ghana, which gained its independence from Britain in 1957. In the early 1960s he traveled to Minnesota to continue his studies, arriving during the advent of the civil rights movement. 

The possibility of change motivated the young economics student.

"Then suddenly one fine morning it's gone," he said. "You walk away one morning and you say, ‘Change is possible.'"

Annan said that international efforts to alleviate poverty must be expanded, and that projects to promote public health have to be strengthened. 

"We are responding, but we're going to need much more money," Annan said. "Fighting poverty doesn't only save lives, but it helps states combat terror and organized crime."

A U.N. anti-malaria program had distributed 18 million mosquito nets worldwide, he said, saving an estimated 1.25 million lives, and programs fighting HIV, tuberculosis and other diseases will need to be bolstered to prevent further suffering. 

The increasing gap between rich and poor, however, must be bridged, Annan said, especially in Latin America. 

"A healthy, wealthy society is a safe one," Annan said. "It also means we accept communal responsibility for human welfare."

Philanthropists, he said, have and will need to continue "megagiving" to the United Nations to bolster funds received from member states.

"The people are all out there, not in this glass house in New York," he said.

Annan said the international community must work together to prevent acts of genocide and armed conflict among nations, highlighting the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan.

"Those with influence and power should pile on political pressure to get the government to bend," Annan said, adding that the use of force in Darfur should be considered a last resort.

The war in Iraq, he said, is a problem that will require a solution from nations around the world and not only the U.S., as some critics of the Bush administration have suggested.

"Iraq is a problem for all of us," Annan said. "If we don't come together as an international community … there will be unimaginable political and economic practices for the whole world. Individuals can be trendsetters in politics, he said, citing the example of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who used his office to save thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust. Wallenberg died in Soviet custody at an unknown date after WWII. 

"I think evil can be contained if the force of good were to act, and act firmly and quickly," Annan said. 

The framework for preventing such crimes can be seen in the 2002 foundation of the International Criminal Court, he said, which has issued warrants for rebels in Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The U.N.-established International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia that prosecuted former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, who died during trial, was an example of an international court's possibilities, Annan said. Milosevic's reign saw the massacre of an estimated 8,000 Bosnian Muslims in the village of Srebrenica by guerillas supported by the Yugoslav government.

"People responsible for the brutality and deaths of hundreds of thousands of people have been brought to justice," Annan said. 

Domestic problems, such as the Sunni and Shi'a division in Iraq, can quickly become global problems, Annan said, and only collaboration between average people and foreign nations can prevent such situations from worsening. 

Prevention, and not reaction, he said, will have to be the way of finding solutions in the 21st century.

"There is lots of good in the world. What is required is that we try to understand each other," Annan said.

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