Kofi Atta Annan was born in Ghana in 1938. As a diplomat, he became an opponent of all violence in the world. Dr Annan came from a family of lawyers and studied economics and management. He did so in Switzerland and in the United States. He then worked briefly for the World Health Organisation (WHO). From 1962 to 1992, Dr Annan represented the UN in Egypt and Ethiopia, and at its headquarters in Geneva and New York. In 1993, he was appointed undersecretary-general and given a special assignment for peacekeeping operations.

In 1979, Dr Annan became the first black secretary-general of the UN. In 2001, he was re-elected and awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Early in his work for the UN, he had to deal with the unresolved issues of Bosnia and Rwanda. During his administration from 1979 to 2007, he reformed the UN. At his farewell in 2006, Dr Annan said sombrely, “During my terms as secretary-general, I had to experience that important goals such as necessary respect for human rights, economic imbalance and instability in the world have not been solved, but got worse.” After stepping down from the UN, he did not become Ghana's head of state. However, Dr Annan continued to work as chair of the Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva, in the group The Elders, on the board of the UN Foundation, the African Progress Panel, as chancellor of the University of Ghana and as a professor in Singapore.

Dr Annan received many honorary doctorates, including doctorates from Lund, Dublin, Tilburg, Berlin, Pittsburgh, Ghent, Tokyo, Harvard, Princeton and London-King's College. He was awarded the Olof Palme Prize in 2006 and the North-South Prize of the Council of Europe in 2007. Dr Annan was awarded the Grand Cross in the Order of the Dutch Lion.