Kofi Annan
Kofi Annan of Ghana is the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations. The first Secretary-General to be elected from the ranks of United Nations staff; he began his first term on January 1, 1997. On June 29, 2001, acting on a recommendation by the Security Council, the General Assembly appointed him by acclamation to a second term of office, beginning on January 1, 2002 and ending on December 31, 2006.
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"If we can create an environment where the average Afghan can go about his or her business in peace, where children can go to school, where women can choose either to put on the … the veil, or not, where they can decide to earn their way and have many and full jobs open to them, if we have an Afghanistan that has an established government which has authority over its territory, an Afghanistan that has managed to tame the regional warlords, and they're all working together in the interest of Afghanistan, then we can say we have a change."
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"Our attention span is sometimes limited," says Kofi Annan of the world community. "We deal with a crisis, we focus on it, but then something else happens and then we are gone. I think we need to make every effort to sustain our interest in Afghanistan and help them get it right this time."
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"In situations where the women's rights are ignored, where their rights are trampled upon, where they are denied access to education, you see the society is often not as free, not as prosperous."
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