Kofi Annan Quotes

The concept of military readiness is well understood, but readiness for what happens after the fighting stops is just as important.

To protect women in times of war, we must first make sure women receive equal rights in times of peace.

We have invented a new human right here - the right to return home after a war.

Rwanda, which is one of the younger independent states in Africa, must be regarded as a model of how great human trauma can be transformed to commence true reconstruction of people. Human trauma can lead to stunted growth and mass withdrawal.

Once the violence has ceased, the US should immediately call on the World Bank and other international institutions to convene a donors conference to rebuild Lebanon's shattered infrastructure.

When you get billions in aid and your weapons resupplied and your ammunition stock resupplied, you don't learn the lesson that war is bad and nobody wins.

I built Kosovo for 10 years.

Winning the peace is harder than winning the war.

Poverty must be eradicated, the resources of our planet used sustainably, human rights respected, equality between men and women strengthened, HIV/AIDS and other diseases prevented, terrorism stopped, and disarmament and non-proliferation secured.

Too many times, the international community has not prepared the post-conflict period in time.

When you've won the war, you're faced with the problem of winning the peace.

So today, we call upon the world leaders to change their strategic policies in favor of peace and prosperity. We call upon the world leaders that all of these deals must protect women and children’s rights. A deal that goes against the rights of women is unacceptable.

The question now is how best to help the Iraqi people build a democratic and free Iraqi society that ensures respect for the rights of all Iraqis.

I don't believe that military intervention is always the right approach. What we need is a comprehensive strategy, one that advances democratization, economic reforms and equal rights for women.

Peace is not just a colored ribbon. It's more than a wristband or a t-shirt. It's not just a donation or a 5 K race. It's not just a folk song, or a white dove. And peace is certainly more than a celebrity endorsement. Peace is a fulltime job. It's protecting civilians, overseeing elections, and disarming ex-combatants. The UN has over 100,000 Peacekeepers on the ground, in places others can't or won't go, doing things others can't or won't do. Peace, like war, must be waged.

Serious research and development efforts are required to produce technologies, strategies, organizations, and trained personnel who can go into failed states, work with our allies and friends, and promote the political and economic reforms that will meet popular needs and reduce the sources of terrorism and conflict.

Working with women survivors of war has taught me that we need to listen to women's perspectives on war in order to understand how to effectively rebuild a country, a community and a family.

I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building.

The connection between women's human rights, gender equality, socioeconomic development and peace is increasingly apparent.

When you talk about humanitarian, it doesn't only mean to offer the people the help, the food, their necessary needs for their life. The first thing, if you ask the Syrian refugees, for example, the first thing they want is to go back to their country.

The United States of America needs to begin to exercise strong leadership to protect the vulnerable citizens and over 100,000 children in Aleppo.

The answer to violence is even more democracy, even more humanity...

The experience of a lot of us women is that too much money is being spent on militarism and war. We need human security: food, education, health care for our children. We don't want to waste it on wars and militarism. That will be our focus: building a culture that moves away from militarism.

I go to places and I see all these people working on peace education and on a culture of nonviolence and non-killing. You look at all these different movements going on: the environment movement, the interfaith movement, the human rights movement, the youth movement, and the arts movement.

Discussions without end have been devoted to the subject of peace, and the efforts to obtain a general and lasting peace have been frequent through many years of world history.