Commencement: Kofi Annan

Secretary-General  of the United Nations, and recipient of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize,  Kofi Annan, will be Penn’s  Commencement Speaker on May 16.

Mr. Annan, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations,  served previously as Assistant Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations and as Under-Secretary-General, among other roles with the UN.

Following the Dayton Peace Agreement, Mr. Annan served as Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the former Yugoslavia, overseeing the transition in Bosnia and Herzegovina from UN Peacekeeping forces to NATO forces from November 1995 to March 1996. Mr. Annan has called for a “Global Compact” aimed at enabling all the world’s people to share the benefits of globalization and embedding the global market in social values and practices.

In April 2000, he issued a Millennium Report, We the Peoples: The Role of the United Nations in the 21st Century, calling on member states to commit themselves to an action plan for ending poverty and inequality, improving education, reducing HIV/AIDS, safeguarding the environment and protecting peoples from deadly conflict and violence. The Report formed the basis of the Millennium Declaration adopted by Heads of State and Government at the Millennium Summit, held at UN Headquarters in September 2000.

Mr. Annan studied at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, and completed his undergraduate work in economics at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1961. He received a Master of Science degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The Secretary-General and the United Nations received the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Mr. Annan will receive an honorary doctor of laws at the Penn Commencement.

For Commencement information see the website, www.upenn.edu/commencement.