United Nations, New York, USA, February 16 2016 – UN personal and visitors pay their respects in silence on the occasion of the death of the former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali today at the UN Headquarters in New York. Photo by: Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire
United Nations, February 16 2016
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today hailed his predecessor, Boutros Boutros Ghali, as a respected statesman who brought “formidable experience and intellectual power to the task of piloting the United Nations through one of the most tumultuous and challenging periods in its history.”
Boutros-Ghali, UN Secretary-General from 1992 to 1996, died at the age of 93.
As Secretary-General, Ban said “he presided over a dramatic rise in UN peacekeeping. He also presided over a time when the world increasingly turned to the United Nations for solutions to its problems, in the immediate aftermath of the cold war.”
Ban said Boutros-Ghali “showed courage in posing difficult questions to the Member States, and rightly insisted on the independence of his office and of the Secretariat as a whole” adding that “the mark he has left on the Organization is indelible.”
United Nations, New York, USA, February 16 2016 – UN personal and visitors pay their respects in silence on the occasion of the death of the former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali today at the UN Headquarters in New York. Photo by: Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire
A veteran Egyptian diplomat and the first UN chief from Africa, Boutros-Ghali, at the time of his appointment, had been Deputy Prime Minister for Foreign Affairs of Egypt since May 1991 and had served as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from October 1977 until 1991.
United Nations, New York, USA, February 16 2016 – UN personal and visitors pay their respects in silence on the occasion of the death of the former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali today at the UN Headquarters in New York. Photo by: Luiz Rampelotto/EuropaNewswire
The sixth United Nations Secretary-General, his term was marked by brutal conflicts in Haiti, Somalia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia, among others. Soon after his inauguration, the Security Council met in its first-ever summit of Heads of State. At their request, Boutros-Ghali authored the report called ‘An Agenda for Peace,’ an analysis on ways to strengthen UN capacity for preventive diplomacy, peacemaking and peacekeeping.
Also during his tenure, he spearheaded UN structural and management reform.
Source: EuropaNewswire, UNTV