Kofi Annan’s Legacy in International Law

Ian Johnstone, opiniojuris.or; original article contains links

Image from article, with caption: The author and Kofi Annan visiting a temple in China on a United Nations visit.

Excerpt:

Tributes to Kofi Annan have poured in since his death on August 18, praising his diplomatic skills, his dignified leadership, and his basic human decency. Having worked with him closely from 1996 to 2000, first in the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations and then the Executive Office of the Secretary-General, I can also testify to his warmth as a human being. He cared for the people the UN is meant to serve, and showed great respect for the people he worked with. I often travelled with him on official business and he treated us all, from the most senior aides to junior support staff, as integral members of his team.

A less well-known feature of his leadership is his impact on international law. Often described as a secular pope, the Secretary-General (SG) has no army at his disposal nor the authority to sanction violators of international law. What the SG does have is the power of persuasion. This power depends on both the diplomatic and advocacy skills of the office-holder and on the office itself – the so-called “bully pulpit.”

SG Annan made deft use of international law in his quieter diplomatic initiatives. In the height of the violence that followed the vote on independence in East Timor (now Timor Leste) in 1999, he engaged in intensive private and public diplomacy [JB emphasis]. When private efforts failed to persuade then-Indonesian President Habibie to take steps to quell the violence, Kofi Annan publicly called for an intervention force, adding that those responsible should be held to account for “what could amount to…crimes against humanity.” When he visited Nigeria in July 1998 to seek its help in managing conflicts in West Africa, he took the opportunity to press the government on its own transition to democracy, which was underway haltingly but by no means certain. This was aligned with a larger international effort to promote a right to political pluralism if not a nascent “right to democracy.” His later mediation efforts in Kenya on behalf of the UN and African Union could be seen in the same light.