On February 16, death robbed Africa and the world of a renowned scholar, diplomat and statesman who passed on at the age of 93.
Dr Boutros Boutros-Ghali was for many years minister of state for foreign affairs of Egypt under president Anwar el Sadat and played a critical role in the 1978 Camp David peace talks between Egypt and Israel.
Boutros-Ghali is remembered most as the 6th Secretary General of the United Nations and it was in this capacity that I met and interacted with him. The first African to hold that prestigious post, he was elected in 1991 and replaced Dr Javier Perez de Cuellar of Peru. He served as Secretary General from 1992 to 1996.
Boutros-Ghali, the man
Boutros-Ghali was born on November 14, 1922, in Cairo to an aristocratic Coptic Christian family in a predominantly Islamic country. His grandfather, Boutros Ghali Pasha, was prime minister of Egypt from 1908 to 1910.
His father, Yusuf Boutros Ghali, was minister of finance under Egyptian King Fuad. Boutros-Ghali was brought up in an upper class environment which bred some arrogance and a tendency to dismiss people who do not have similar background.
He would in, due course, pay dearly for such an attitude, but on balance he was a good man, competent and, like me, a passionate advocate of the United Nations.
He graduated with a law degree from Cairo University in 1946 and earned a PhD in International Law from Sorbonne University in France. He was professor of International Law and International Relations at Cairo University for 20 years from 1949 to 1979 and a Fulbright Research Scholar at New York’s prestigious Columbia University from 1954 to 1955.
Boutros-Ghali, politician and diplomat
Boutros-Ghali’s political career began during the regime of president Sadat when he was appointed a member of the central committee of the ruling Arab Socialist Union from 1974 to 1977.
In 1977, he was appointed minister of state for foreign affairs, a position he held for 14 years until 1991.
As minister of state for foreign affairs, he played a key role in the Camp David peace talks between Egypt and Israel which culminated for the 1979 peace accord signed in Washington, DC between president Sadat and Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin.
Both leaders were awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1979 in recognition of the peace treaty brokered by US president Jimmy Carter.
President Sadat promoted Boutros-Ghali deputy prime minister in 1991, the year he was appointed UN Secretary General.
On January 1, 1992, Boutros-Ghali, aged 69 years, became UN Secretary General. As the top UN diplomat he dealt with many national and international crises which threatened world peace and security such as Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia and the Middle East.
In 1992, he proposed in a document titled, An Agenda for Peace, a blueprint for the UN to deal with conflicts, but its implementation left a lot to be desired.
For example, he was blamed for the UN’s glaring failure to take proactive and decisive action in 1994 to prevent the Rwandan genocide, much as the big powers of the UN who were unwilling to implement Security Council decisions on the matter deserve the blame.
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