Kofi Annan Chairman,
Alliance for a Green Revolution

Kofi Annan served as United Nations Secretary-General from 1997-2006. He is currently Chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution, a partnership working to help millions of small-scale farmers and their families lift themselves out of poverty and hunger.

During his tenure at the UN, he prioritized a program of comprehensive reform aimed at revitalizing the United Nations. He was a constant advocate for human rights, the rule of law, the Millennium Development Goals and Africa, and sought to bring the organization closer to the global public by forging ties with civil society, the private sector and other partners.

Under his leadership, UN peacekeeping was bolstered in ways that enabled the organization to adeptly manage a swift rise in the number and size of operations and personnel. It was also at Mr. Annan's urging that, in 2005, Member States established two new intergovernmental bodies: the Peacebuilding Commission and the Human Rights Council. Mr. Annan played a central role in the creation of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the adoption of the UN's first-ever counter-terrorism strategy, and the acceptance by Member States of the “responsibility to protect” people from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. His “Global Compact” initiative, launched in 1999, has become the world's largest effort to promote corporate social responsibility. When elected to the Secretary-Generalship in 1997, Mr. Annan became the first UN Secretary-General to come directly from the United Nations staff, and the first from a Sub-Saharan African nation to hold the position.