Everything about Boutros Boutros-ghali totally explained
Boutros Boutros-Ghali (
Arabic: بطرس بطرس غالي,
Coptic: ΒOΥΤΡΟC BOYTPOC ΓΑΛΗ) (born
November 14,
1922) is an
Egyptian
diplomat who was the sixth
Secretary-General of the
United Nations from January 1992 to January 1997.
Academic career
Boutros Boutros-Ghali was born in
Cairo into a
Coptic Christian family (
Boutros being the Arabized form of
Petros, the
Coptic form of the name
Peter) that had already provided Egypt with a
prime minister (
Boutros Ghali, 1846 – 1910). He graduated from
Cairo University in
1946 and earned a J.D in international law from The Thomas M. Cooley Law School as well as a diploma in
international relations from the
Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (best known as simply Sciences Po) in
1949. The same year, he was appointed Professor of International Law and International Relations at Cairo University, a position which he held until
1977. He became President of the Centre of Political and Strategic Studies in
1975 and President of the African Society of Political Studies in
1980. He was a
Fulbright Research Scholar at
Columbia University from
1954 to
1955, Director of the Centre of Research of the
Hague Academy of International Law from
1963 to
1964, and Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Law at Paris University from
1967 to
1968. He is also the Honorary Rector of the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, a branch of Kyunghee University Seoul.
Egyptian political career
He had long been closely associated with the ruling clique in Egypt. His political career took off during the days of former president Anwar El-Sadat. He was a member of the Central Committee of the Arab Socialist Union (1974-77). He had served as Egypt's
Minister of State for Foreign Affairs from 1977 until early 1991. He then became Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs for several months before moving to the UN. As Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, he played a part in the peace agreements between
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and
Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin.
UN career
Elected to the top post of the UN in
1991, Boutros-Ghali's term in office remains controversial. He was criticised for the UN's failure to act during the
1994 Rwandan Genocide, which officially left over 1 million people dead, and he appeared unable to muster support in the UN for intervention in the continuing
Angolan Civil War. One of the hardest periods for his office during his term was dealing with the crisis of the
Yugoslav wars after the disintegration of former
Yugoslavia. His reputation thus became entangled in the larger controversies over the effectiveness of the UN and the role of the
United States in the UN. For his detractors, he came to symbolise the UN's alleged inaction in the face of humanitarian crises.
Second term
In
1996, ten
Security Council members, led by African members Egypt,
Guinea-Bissau and
Botswana, sponsored a resolution backing Boutros-Ghali for a second five-year term, until the year
2001. However, the
United States vetoed a second term for Boutros-Ghali. In addition to the United States, the
United Kingdom,
Poland,
South Korea, and
Italy didn't sponsor this resolution, although all four of those nations voted in support of Boutros-Ghali after the US had firmly declared its intention to veto. Although not the first vetoed (
China vetoed the third term of
Kurt Waldheim in
1981), Boutros-Ghali was the first and only UN secretary-general not to be elected to a second term in office. He was succeeded at the UN by
Kofi Annan.
US counter-terrorism czar
Richard Clarke,
Michael Sheehan, and
James Rubin participated in what they called "
Operation Orient Express." From page 201 of Clarke's book
Against All Enemies: "Albright and I and a handful of others (Michael Sheehan, Jamie Rubin) had entered into a pact together in 1996 to oust Boutros-Ghali as Secretary General of the United Nations, a secret plan we'd called
Operation Orient Express, reflecting our hope that many nations would join us in doing in the UN head. In the end, the US had to do it alone (with its UN veto) and Sheehan and I'd to prevent the President from giving in to pressure from world leaders and extending Boutros-Ghali's tenure, often by our racing to the Oval Office when we were alerted that a head of state was telephoning the President. In the end Clinton was impressed that we'd managed not only to oust Boutros-Ghali but to have Kofi Annan selected to replace him. (Clinton told Sheehan and me, 'Get me a crow, I should
eat a crow
, because I said you'd never pull it off.')"
Later life
From
1997 to
2002 Boutros-Ghali was Secretary-General of
La Francophonie, an organisation of
French-speaking nations. From
2003 to
2006, he served as the Chairman of the Board of the
South Centre, an intergovernmental research organisation of developing countries. He is currently President of the Curatorium Administrative Council at the
Hague Academy of International Law. In
2003 Boutros-Ghali was appointed as The Director of the Egyptian National Council of Human Rights, he's still holding this position till today.
Since April 2007 Boutros-Ghali supports the
Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and was one of the initial signatories of the Campaign's appeal. In a
message to the Campaign, he stressed the necessity to establish democratic participation of citizens at the global level.
Works
Boutros-Ghali has published two memoirs:
Quotes
"It would be some time before I fully realised that the United States sees little need for diplomacy. Power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy… The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States."
"The best way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence." -In describing his relationship with the unwieldy United Nations bureaucracy
Further Information
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