18
General before Annan’s tenure, has observed that the current Secretary-General “has taken
seriously the idea of being a conscience for the international community. He’s used the office to
push some very important ideas that are not immediately popular.”
cx
While the extent to which
these ideas stem from his Christian faith is not immediately clear based on the comments above,
it is apparent that he was a “committed globalist” from his college days and that as Secretary-
General he has advanced a vision of what some have called a “moral world order.”
cxi
There
appear to be two important ethical values which lie at the heart of his vision: a concern for the
dignity of every human being and a deep commitment to the peaceful resolution of conflict.
The first of these values, human dignity, is what Urquhart has in mind when he indicates
that some of Annan’s ideas have not been popular.
cxii
The most controversial part of Annan’s
thinking on human dignity was laid out in his annual address to the General Assembly on
September 20, 1999.
cxiii
In this speech he argued that the international community must be
willing to disregard state sovereignty and intervene to protect individual human beings from
those who abuse them.
This effort to place individual sovereignty above state sovereignty
became known in some circles as the Kofi Doctrine;
cxiv
it was immediately criticized by some
delegates, policymakers, journalists, and academics as setting a dangerous precedent for
unending humanitarian wars, but because of Annan’s stature he “got away” with this direct
challenge to the status quo.
cxv
One source of Annan’s concern for human dignity, and arguably
the reason why he feels so strongly about this value, lie in the UN’s failures during the mid
1990s in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Somalia, among other places.
cxvi
However, his concern for
human dignity extends beyond cases where individuals are threatened with ethnic cleansing and
other human rights abuses to include all aspects of our daily lives covering poverty, development,
Convention