Cover image: Kofi Annan meets with high-school students in Kabul, Afghanistan, in January 2002. Copyright © Chien-min Chung/Getty Photos
Taking Inspiration from Kofi Annan
On 3 and 4 June 2019, Chatham House hosted a major conference in partnership with the United Nations Association – UK (UNA-UK), supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Open Society Foundations, to reflect on the lessons learned from the remarkable life of Kofi Annan, who served as UN secretary-general from 1997 to 2006 and passed away on 18 August 2018.
The conference fell on the same days as Donald Trump’s state visit to the UK, which, though coincidental, brought into stark relief the ways in which current changes in international relations are affecting Annan’s legacy of UN-led multilateralism, which Ban Ki-moon and now António Guterres have carried forward.
A vision of multilateral governance
Annan advocated a vision of multilateral governance, anchored in shared responsibility for global challenges and in the promotion of the rights and dignity of the individual. He placed the importance of individual freedom and justice alongside the global challenges of reducing poverty and improving health outcomes. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the UN Global Fund on HIV/AIDS, which brought together both strands of his approach to global governance, stand among his landmark contributions to international affairs.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the UN Global Fund on HIV/AIDS, which brought together both strands of his approach to global governance, stand among his landmark contributions to international affairs.
Annan’s time as secretary-general also saw him involved in managing numerous crises. The 2003 US-led military intervention in Iraq raised acute questions about the purpose and future of the UN Security Council. The aftermath of the conflict also exposed serious failings in the broader UN system under his leadership.
It was to his credit that he leveraged the investigation into the corruption surrounding the UN’s 1995–2003 ‘oil-for-food’ programme in order to introduce procedures for greater scrutiny over UN financial programmes and personnel appointments. In 2000, he set up and then took on board the criticisms of the Brahimi Report into the failed UN peacekeeping operations in Rwanda and Srebrenica during his tenure as undersecretary-general for peacekeeping.
Global governance on the defensive
One can look back at Annan’s term as UN secretary-general as a period when ideas for how to improve global governance were in the ascendant, despite the persistence of civil wars and interstate disputes. Today, the persistence of long-standing conflicts and growing competition between the world’s major powers appear to be overwhelming the global agenda, putting ideas for global governance on the defensive.
America’s purposeful disengagement from and disruption of the multilateral institutions that it helped establish during the 20th century are a major factor in this shift. The principal difference with the Cold War is that China’s rise might divide America from its allies rather than unite it with them.
China has become embedded in the global economy that America championed, creating new webs of interdependence. At the same time, China is promoting a system of domestic and international governance that gives primacy to the state over the rights of the individual. In recent years, China has not only supported the world’s most repressive regimes, such as North Korea, Venezuela and Zimbabwe, but has also underwritten corrupt and opaque practices in countries in Southeast Asia and Africa. And it is offering new digital surveillance tools that leaders in these countries can use to suppress popular dissent.
This rise of a more competitive international system has had a negative effect on Annan’s legacy, eroding some of its highlights, such as expectations for the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine, and weakening multilateralism and respect for human rights in general.
Despite concerns over its direction, most states around the world – even US allies in Europe and Asia – continue to engage with China. America, however, has decided to challenge it. With the world’s two most powerful states in confrontation, and Russia happy to play a disruptive role in between, there is little scope for state-led multilateralism to regain its momentum.
This rise of a more competitive international system has had a negative effect on Annan’s legacy, eroding some of its highlights, such as expectations for the ‘responsibility to protect’ doctrine, and weakening multilateralism and respect for human rights in general.
The question for the future is whether Annan’s successors can build on the more radical, transformative aspects of his tenure and bypass this state-led confrontation. The shift from the MDGs to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) could prove critical in this respect.
A more inclusive approach to complex problem-solving
In order to have a chance of achieving the SDGs, the world needs to deploy a more inclusive approach to complex problem-solving of the sort that Annan promoted with his Global Compact. Bringing the private sector and civil society proactively into multilateral responses offers the only prospect for ending poverty, reducing inequalities, building sustainable cities, shifting to responsible production and consumption, and realizing the other SDGs.
A more inclusive approach also means giving a greater sense of agency to individuals, who can now mobilize digitally and engage in responding to global challenges – such as creating more energy-efficient and climate-friendly lifestyles – with minimal government support. Annan was a pioneer of this more bottom-up approach to development and rights issues after leaving the UN, through his work on youth leadership against violent extremism and on transforming agriculture in Africa.
Thinking of systemic change as a more societal rather than government-led process demands leaders capable of mobilizing mass individual action towards public policy goals, as reflected, for example, in Secretary-General António Guterres’ High-level Panel on Digital Cooperation.
The fact that Annan was dubbed ‘the secular pope’ by some points to people’s search for leadership on shared global challenges that goes beyond what can be achieved by national action alone. If an important part of his legacy is the idea of more inclusive forms of global governance, then Kofi Annan has provided an essential starting point for the debates that will accompany the UN’s upcoming 75th anniversary.
Dr Robin Niblett CMG is the director of Chatham House. An earlier version of this piece was published on the Chatham House website on 31 May 2019.