Talk:Kofi Annan/Archive 1

Secretariat?
Article says:
 * In the UN Secretariat, he served with the UN Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa

I didn't think the ECOSOC Regional Commissions were part of the Secretariat.

Also, whoever put this up here, did you write it yourself? If so, congratulations on a very good article; but on the other hand if you copied it from somewhere, from where and did you get permission? --- Simon J Kissane

Yes, the staffs of the regional commissions are part of the UN Secretariat.

The biography is largely copied from the UN website, with minor editing. I used to work for the UN Department of Public Information and I know that they would be quite happy to see this material disseminated as widely as possible. We can't credit this to the UN, since there's no telling what changes others will make.

Thanks for your remarkably prompt additions to the Secretary-General article.

--- Frank Barabas, fbarabas@nyc.rr.org

Do you think that holds for other UN websites (e.g. someone earlier on copied from the International Court of Justice website, which I deleted because they hadn't asked for permission)? I suppose though it is better to ask anyway. --- Simon J Kissane

UN policy is that material appearing in their press releases -- and that is where the website text came from in this case -- may be freely used, preferably (but not necessarily) with attribution to the UN. Attribution would not be appropriate for material in Wikipedia, which can be changed by anyone. However, you have raised a good question, so I have e-mailed the UN with a query about reuse of material, with specific reference to the Annan biography. I shall let you know what answer I receive. In the meantime, I believe it's safe to leave the present article in place.

By the way, almost everything I have found on the Web about the work of the International Seabed Authority has come from its press releases, often word for word and almost always without attribution, and I assure you that the Authority is quite happy to see this material on the Web or in the press. By another way, the new Wikipedia article on the Authority is my own contribution and exists nowhere else.

Did he go to Minnesota or Switzerland? Clarify.

===Frank Barabas If we want to give attribution, maybe we could just say "This article was originally based on a United Nations press release", or something similar? Which would remain true even if someone later came along and changed the article. -- Simon J Kissane

That sounds like a good idea. Another possibility would be to include an external link to the original source. Does Wikipedia have a formula or policy on attribution in such cases?

Let's wait to hear the UN reply.--Frank Barabas

I just found the UN's reuse policy :

"Copyrights

"Most public information materials, including press releases, fact sheets and features, produced by the Department of Public Information are not copy righted and can be reproduced without prior permission. UN sales publications are copyrighted and thus require written permission for reproduction. Requests for permission to reproduce United Nations material should be directed to the Secretary of the Publications Board, Room L-382C, United Nations, New York, NY 10017. Fax : (212) 963- 0077."

That takes care of the Annan biography, to which I shall now add an external link to the original source.

As to the International Court of Justice, here is its policy :

"Information or data contained at this site may not be reproduced or used for commercial purposes."

If Wikipedia has no commercial purposes, it is in the clear.--Frank Barabas

Well, Wikipedia is not presently being used for commercial purposes; but it is distributed under a licence (GNU FDL) which requires commercial use to be permitted; and I think Bomis (the people who run the servers) are thinking of maybe putting advertising up to raise money in the distant future. So if it says no commercial use I don't think we can use it. -- Simon J Kissane

The information currently on the International Court of Justice page does not come from their site and so we are in the clear on that. The ICJ page's info was replaced with information from the U.S. Department of State site, which is in the public domain unless explicitly noted otherwise. The ICJ site was merely listed as an additional reference. --KQ

Image Copyright
Anonymous user 142.58.101.24 recently edited this article with the following summary: "returning original portrait. The UN does not have restrictions on the use of their official portraits of UN officials". I can't find any verification for that claim. It's contradicted by the UN site's copyright page (All rights reserved. None of the materials provided on this web site may be used, reproduced or transmitted, in whole or in part...), terms of use (grants permission to... download and copy the information, documents and materials... for the User's personal, non-commercial use, without any right to resell or redistribute them or to compile or create derivative...) , and the Information guide – already quoted above, but only covering "most public information materials" – (UN photographs are reproducible for editorial purposes only... There is a $50.00 charge, payable to the United Nations, for each UN photo used in publication, whether it is obtained from the Photo Library or downloaded from the UN Photo website.). Is there a disclaimer somewhere saying the Secretary-General's portrait is excluded from these restrictions? –Hajor 19:28, 8 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Possible copyright infringement
(Text moved from article)

Removed possible copyright infringement. Text that was previously posted here is the same as text from this webpage:
 * http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sg/pages/sg_biography.html

This page is now listed on Possible copyright infringements. To the poster: If there was permission to use this material under terms of our license or if you are the copyright holder of the externally linked text, then please indicate so on this page's talk page (to access the talk page, click on Discuss this page in the sidebar). If there was no permission to use this text then please either replace this message with at least a good stub and an external link or leave this page to be deleted. (NOTE: unless a stub replaces this text, deletion will occur about one week from the time this page title was placed on the Votes for deletion page).

It also should be noted that the posting of copyrighted material that does not have the express permission from the copyright holder is possibly in violation of applicable law and of our policy. Those with a history of violations may be temporarily suspended from editing pages. If this is in fact an infringement of copyright, we still welcome any original contributions by you.

Thanks, snoyes 17:25, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Visits
Would this be a list of all his visits? http://www.un.org/News/ossg/sgtrips.htm I don't have time to copy all of that right now, but that would be useful for filling in that section...--Tothebarricades.tk 05:25, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The article says "Annan visited Japan first as UN Secretary-General to in February 2004." Is this saying: a) He first visited Japan as UN S-G in February 2004 b) He was the first UN S-G to visit Japan, and this happened in February 2004 c) both of the above d) something else I haven't edited the article as I'm not sure what the real facts are.

education information missing?
In 1958, Annan began studying economics at the University of Science and Technology in Kumasi. He received a Ford Foundation grant in 1961, enabling him to study at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota, United States in 1961. There, Annan studied at the Institute for Advanced International Studies ("Institut universitaire des hautes études internationales") in Geneva, Switzerland, from 1961-62), later attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1971-72), where he graduated as a Sloan Fellow with a Master of Science degree in management.

...something missing?


 * Assuming 'there' should be 'then'. grendel|khan 18:24, 2004 Jul 14 (UTC)

He probably studied abroad while at Macalester (a very encouraged action by the college.)

Poop food?
"...once lead a successful student hunger strike for better school poop food."

I'm not familiar with this expression... could we reword it or otherwise clarify? Radagast 23:00, Jul 13, 2004 (UTC)


 * Haha, poop food. I'm guessing that was a poor attempt at vandalism. It's gone now. --Tothebarricades.tk 01:28, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

UN portrait
After adding the UN portrait, I noticed that (I think) it had already been debated and removed as a copyright infringement. (The "Image copyright" section above, though I don't know exactly what that was about.) However, I got it off the State Department website. Either the State Department's also violating copyright, or we can claim them as a source. Either way, it's okay to have that photo up, right? (Full information on the photo page.) grendel|khan 18:20, 2004 Jul 14 (UTC)

Iraq war
As it is a major part in Mr. Annan's recent history, shouldn't something be mentioned about his involvement in this crisis. I lack the knowledge I'm afraid.

Erolos 01:08, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I guess we also need more about what he's done in his time as Secretary-General. Unfortunately, it seems like work has stalled on this so far, and I'm not too sure of what to add now. Ambivalenthysteria 08:08, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Early life
My father was in the same year as Annan at Mfantsipim, and was quite a close friend Seeing that this article was named Article of the Week, I asked him to read the article through. In addition to a few minor changes he calls two statements into question:


 * When Annan's father retired... he was elected governor of Asante province.

Apparently no official of that kind (or at least by that name) existed at the time - does anyone have any information?


 * [Annan] once led a successful student hunger strike for better school food.

My father doesn't recall this particular incident! Again, are there any other sources?

-- Kwekubo 21:10, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The part where it says that Hannan became the most currupted UN chiefs in history sould definitivly be removed!

Kofi Annan's successor
Maybe Vaclav Havel?

Is there a source for this claim? CSTAR 06:49, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * It's informal talk so far - see e.g. this article in the Wall Street Journal


 * This particular WSJ online piece is written by Glenn Reynolds. However, I didn't see it  yesterday or today in the OpEd section of the print version of the WSJ, so I doubt the Havel-for-secretary-general movement has the official imprimatur of the WSJ.  I have no objection to making some comment, in the body of the article, with attribution to  Glenn Reynolds, that some have proposed Havel's candidacy. However, placing a prediction like this in a table at the bottom of the Annan article, even with a qualifier "maybe" is confusing.CSTAR 17:08, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Actually I expected that someone would erase this "maybe Havel" immediately. ;-) I am skeptical about this because of Havel's health which is rather poor. --Lumidek 18:37, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * Well, I deleted it. It is not clear from your remark whether your edit was intended as a prank or whether you simply weren't prepared to expend the energy to negotiate a compromise to keep some reference to Havel as a possible successor to Annan. If this was a prank, note that I have nothing against the occasional harmless prank in real life (I went to school between Central and Porter squares,  so I'm aware of pranks at the other place), but given the level of destructive vandalism in WP, it's probably not a good idea here. CSTAR 23:11, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I find that other rumours mention a Thai, an Indian, and Bill Clinton. Anyway it's all highly speculative at this point. Charles Matthews 07:23, 8 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Selection of quotes
Having just read the article I could not shake off the feeling that the quote on force and diplomacy was not Annan's &mdash; while the link undoubtfully proves that it is &mdash; until I recalled the well-known quote that prompted this feeling, attributed to Al Capone: “You can get [more or farther] with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.”

While the selection of quotes is definitely article author's choice, and recognizing that the guy really said that, I still think that encyclopaedia article is supposed to be as unbiased as possible towards the subject; but anyhow, my main intention was to point to the strong allusion the quote makes. If this was indeed an article writer's goal, then I take my hat off and step back into the shadow, but if not, then the choice of quotes certainly prompts rethinking.

[mailto:kkm@pobox.com -kkm]

Seventh or eight?
According to this page Koffi Annan is the seventh Secretary-General, accoring to United_Nations_Secretary-General he is the eight.

Which one is correct? Donar Reiskoffer 07:53, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)


 * He's the seventh Secretary-General. Sir Gladwyn Jebb was just the acting Secretary-General until Trygve Lie became the first offical Secretary-General. Therefore, the count begins with Lie.  Lokifer 08:47, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

UN flag burning link
I am rather dismayed that the "UN Flag burning in NH over Kofi Annan" link added by RussellKanning on December 17 has been allowed to remain until now. In my opinion the page linked to is just a manifestation of hatred and doesn't really add anything to the subject. That article also seems to have been written by RussellKanning himself and the link appears to be cheap advertisement for his "movement".

IMO this should have no place in an encyclopedia. 23:43, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

NPOV dispute
I hate these dispute tags, in fact this is the first one I have added to an article. However the content of this article is very clearly lopsided. Almost all the material about Annan's UN career has to do with criticism or controversy over his decisions, performance, and character. It seems that all of his quotations were chosen to highlight what conservatives dislike about him, and while all the quotations "about" him are positive, they are all just expressing support for him in the face of criticism, which hardly says anything about the man himself.

I am tagging this article in hopes of drawing more some more balanced edits. I do not wish to get involved in this myself, however I am adding a single quotation. NTK 16:53, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Note, I do believe this article would be incomplete without discussion of some of the controversies concerning Annan, however they should not constitute the bulk of the article, and following convention, detailed criticisms should be relegated to a separate section, or if very lengthy, a separate page. NTK 17:04, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * Very good point NTK. I agree with you. --Spinboy 06:24, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)


 * This article will be very helpful when one of us get time to improve on the article's problem. Its a biography of his life as a UN employee.

Why is there nothing on the Oil/Food scandal? Is anyone paying attention to current events? How is this page's neutrality not disputed? -Haizum

Quote Request
I remember very fondly, during the 2004 olympics, there was a series of Advertisements and Annan was asked what is his olympic moment... and he said something along the lines of "not when at the finish line, not during the race, but before the starting is signalled: Because it is then that all countries are equal." I thought that was a very beautiful sentiment. I would be very grateful if someone could help source the exact quote and put it in the quote section. novacatz 05:59, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Found it novacatz 04:25, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 15:12, 1 May 2016 (UTC)