Just In: Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan Is Dead
Lekan Paul
Posted On Aug 18, 2018
Kofi Annan, the former United Nations Secretary-General, has died at the age of 80.
The official Twitter account of the United Nations Migration Agency revealed the news of Annan’s death early Saturday.
He is said to have died in Switzerland, Saturday morning after a short illness.
Annan was appointed the seventh Secretary-General, the top post of the UN, by the UN General Assembly in December 1996. He began serving his four-year term of office on January 1, 1997.
In the summer of 2001, the United Nations unanimously appointed Kofi Annan to his second five-year term as Secretary-General.
On October 12, 2001, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded jointly to the United Nations and Kofi Annan. The Nobel citation pointed out that Annan had brought new life to the peacekeeping organization, highlighted the United Nations’s fight for civil rights, and boldly taken on the new challenges of terrorism and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS; a disease of the immune system).
