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When You Have Difficult Issues On The Table For Discussion, Then Sometimes For Africa You May Have Burundi Or Gambia Representing Them On The Security Council; And Then For Latin America You May Have A Country Like Costa Rica, Which Is A Wonderful Country But They Don't Have The Same Weight As Others From The Other Regions. And Sometimes They Get Bullied. Sometimes Their Capitals Come Under Lots Of Pressure To Take A Position.

-Kofi Annan

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When You Have Difficult

Kofi Annan

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When You Have Difficult Issues On The Table For Discussion, Then Sometimes For Africa You May Have Burundi Or Gambia Representing Them On The Security Council; And Then For Latin America You May Have A Country Like Costa Rica, Which Is A Wonderful Country But They Don't Have The Same Weight As Others From The Other Regions. And Sometimes They Get Bullied. Sometimes Their Capitals Come Under Lots Of Pressure To Take A Position.

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After The End Of The Cold War, Everybody Thought, Fantastic, Finally The Un May Be Able To Do What It Was Originally Set Up To Do Without Big Power Divisions. It Would Be Easy To Get Them To Come Together To Resolve Things. You Will Recall, On The First Gulf War, You Almost Got A Unanimous Resolution And A Very Solid Coalition.

We Tend To Look At Countries In Terms Of Failed States And Functioning States, Which Is Rather Simplistic.

Sometimes In Peacekeeping Operations You Show Force In Order Not To Use Force - People Realise That There's A Pushback And There's A Solid Force There That's Not Going To Be Pushed Around, That Sometimes Helps.

I Spent My Youth And My Most Formative Years In Africa. I Left Africa When I Was About 20, 21, And When Mo Says A Great African, I Was Really Moulded By My African Experience, Although I Had The Good Fortune That By The Time I Was 24 I Had Studied And Worked On Three Continents - Africa, The Us, And Europe.

Once You Are Really Challenged, You Find Something In Yourself. Man Doesn't Know What He Is Capable Of Until He Is Asked.

If We Do Not Get A Universal Acceptance Of The Constitution The Likelihood Of The Violence Continuing Is There. If It Had Been An Inclusive Exercise -- As When Everybody Had Embraced The Constitution And Everyone Saw His Interest Protected By The Constitution -- I Think It Would Have Been A Rallying Exercise. We Are Not There At This Stage

The United Nations Believes That Acceptance Of These Principles Will Help The Palestinian People Achieve Their Legitimate Goal Of An End To Occupation And The Creation Of An Independent And Viable State, Living In Peace And Security With Its Neighbors.

By Signing The Oslo Accords In 1993 He Took A Giant Step Towards The Realization Of This Vision. It Is Tragic That He Did Not Live To See It Fulfilled.

Children Are Our Future And If We Use Them In Battle, We Are Destroying The Future. We Must Reclaim Them, Every One Of Them, One At A Time.

Usually, When You Look Around The World, People Are Killing Each Other, Fighting Over Scarce Resources.

Education Is The Great Equalizer Of Our Time. It Gives Hope To The Hopeless And Creates Chances For Those Without.

More Countries Have Understood That Women's Equality Is A Prerequisite For Development.

I Think The World Has Moved On.

The World Is Not Ours To Keep. We Hold It In Trust For Future Generations.

Future Generation

It Is Within The Family That Children Learn The Values That Will Guide Them For The Rest Of Their Lives. It Is Within The Family That They Form Their Earliest Relationships, Learn To Communicate With Others And Interact With The World Around Them. It Is Within The Family That The Notion Of Human Rights Becomes A Reality Lived On A Daily Basis. If Tolerance, Respect And Equity Permeate Family Life, They Will Translate Into Values That Shape Societies, Nations And The World.

Access To Safe Water Is A Fundamental Human Need And Therefore A Basic Human Right.

Neutrality Is A Tough Call For The Weaker Ones.

The United Nations, Whose Membership Comprises Almost All The States In The World, Is Founded On The Principle Of The Equal Worth Of Every Human Being.

I Urge The Iraqi Leadership For Sake Of Its Own People... To Seize This Opportunity And Thereby Begin To End The Isolation And Suffering Of The Iraqi People.

Slavery Was, In A Very Real Sense, The First International Human Rights Issue To Come To The Fore. It Led To The Adoption Of The First Human Rights Laws And To The Creation Of The First Human Rights Non-governmenta L Organization. And Yet Despite The Efforts Of The International Community To Combat This Abhorrent Practice, It Is Still Widely Prevalent In All Its Insidious Forms, Old And New.

I Have Often Said That We Have Two Uns; The Un That Is A Secretariat, That Implements The Mandates Handed Over To It By The General Assembly And The Security Council, And The Un That Is The Member States Who Sit In The Council, Take The Decisions, Hand Over The Mandates, Or Take Decisions In The General Assembly.

If You Are Neutral In A Situation Where One Side Is Patently Being Mistreated, The Conclusion Is That You're Siding With This Wrong.

The Us-led Invasion Of Iraq Was An Illegal Act That Contravened The Un Charter.

Asked Whether Donor Nations May Be Becoming Fatigued ... The Fatigue May Be There, But I Don't Think We Can Justify It In The Face Of Such Misery. We May Need To Wake Up Our Conscience And Our Conscience Must Force Us To Act.

My Intimate Knowledge Of The [un] System Allowed Me To Get Things Done Despite The Many Obstacles.

Un Is Made Even More Complex By The Constant Interplay Of Politics And Bureaucracy And Can Certainly Be Bewildering For A Novice.

We Will Not Enjoy Security Without Development, We Will Not Enjoy Development Without Security, And We Will Not Enjoy Either Without Respect For Human Rights.

The Gap Between The Rich And The Poor Cannot Keep Growing Without Nothing Being Done About It.

In A World Of Plenty, Continued Suffering Is A Terrible Stain On Our Conscience. It Is Inexcusable That We Not Strive, With Every Resource At Our Disposal, To Eliminate Suffering.

In The Past We Could Afford A Long Gestation Period Before Undertaking Major Environmental Policy Initiatives. Today The Time For A Well-planned Transition To A Sustainable System Is Running Out. We May Be Moving In The Right Direction, But We Are Moving Too Slowly. We Are Failing In Our Responsibility To Future Generations And Even The Present One.

The Report Produced By My Commission, The Global Commission On Elections, Democracy And Security, In 2012 Showed The Corrosive Impact Of Money In Us Politics, For Example, Which Undermines The Legitimacy Of The Democratic System In Citizens' Eyes. Such Perceptions Partly Explain The Rise Of A Phenomenon Like The Success Of Donald Trump.

We Must Ensure That The Global Market Is Embedded In Broadly Shared Values And Practices That Reflect Global Social Needs, And That All The World's People Share The Benefits Of Globalization.

Economic Globalization

Landmines Are Among The Most Barbaric Weapons Of War, Because They Continue To Kill And Maim Innocent People Long After The War Itself Has Ended. Also, Fear Of Them Keeps People Off The Land, And Thus Prevents Them From Growing Food.

It's Not That Easy To Quit. When You Look Back In The American System It Is Very Rare That People Quit On Issues Of Principle.

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Johann Georg Hamann

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