Kofi Annan in the context of "United Nations Security Council Resolution 1239"

The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) is a major assessment of the human impact on the environment, called for by the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan in 2000, launched in 2001 and published in 2005 with more than $14 million of grants. It popularized the term ecosystem services, the benefits gained by humans from ecosystems.

Ban Ki-moon (Korean: 반기문; born June 13, 1944) is a South Korean politician and diplomat who served as the eighth secretary-general of the United Nations between 2007 and 2016. Prior to his appointment as secretary-general, Ban was the South Korean minister of foreign affairs and trade between 2004 and 2006. Ban was initially considered to be a long shot for the office of Secretary-General of the United Nations; he began to campaign for the office in February 2006. As the foreign minister of South Korea, he was able to travel to all the countries on the United Nations Security Council, a manoeuvre that subsequently turned him into the campaign's front-runner.

On 13 October 2006, Ban was elected as the eighth secretary-general by the United Nations General Assembly. On 1 January 2007, he succeeded Kofi Annan. As secretary-general, he was responsible for several major reforms on peacekeeping and UN employment practices around the world. Diplomatically, Ban has taken particularly strong views on global warming, pressing the issue repeatedly with U.S. president George W. Bush, and on the Darfur conflict, where he helped persuade Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir to allow peacekeeping troops to enter Sudan. Ban was named the world's 32nd most powerful person by the Forbes list of The World's Most Powerful People in 2013, the highest among South Koreans. In 2014, he was named the third most powerful South Korean after Lee Kun-hee and Lee Jae-yong. In 2016, Foreign Policy named Ban one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for his achievement of helping the Paris Agreement to be ratified and enforced less than a year after it was adopted.

The Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer is an international treaty designed to protect the ozone layer by phasing out the production of numerous substances that are responsible for ozone depletion. It was agreed on 16 September 1987, and entered into force on 1 January 1989. Since then, it has undergone several amendments and adjustments, with revisions agreed to in 1990 (London), 1992 (Copenhagen), 1995 (Vienna), 1997 (Montreal), 1999 (Beijing), 2007 (Montreal), 2016 (Kigali) and 2018 (Quito). As a result of the international agreement, the ozone hole over Antarctica is slowly recovering. Climate projections indicate that the ozone layer will return to 1980 levels between 2040 (across much of the world) and 2066 (over Antarctica). Due to its widespread adoption and implementation, it has been hailed as an example of successful international co-operation. Former United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that "perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date has been the Montreal Protocol". In comparison, effective burden-sharing and solution proposals mitigating regional conflicts of interest have been among the success factors for the ozone depletion challenge, where global regulation based on the Kyoto Protocol has failed to do so. In this case of the ozone depletion challenge, there was global regulation already being implemented before a scientific consensus was established. Also, overall public opinion was convinced of possible imminent risks.

The ozone treaty has been ratified by 198 parties (197 states and the European Union), making it the first universally ratified treaty in United Nations history.

Special Envoy of the Secretary-General (SESG) is a title used by certain United Nations officials who are appointed by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to deal with specific issues.

Examples include the SESGs on HIV/AIDS in Africa, on LRA-affected areas, on indigenous people, to a specific country, et cetera. George H. W. Bush, the 41st president of the United States, was chosen by the UN to serve as the Special Envoy for South Asia in December 2005. Others include Bill Clinton (a former president of the United States), who was named the Special Envoy for Haiti in 2009, and Gordon Brown (a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom), who was named the Special Envoy for Global Education in July 2012. For much of 2012, Kofi Annan, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, was Joint Special Envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League for Syria. There are many other people of different backgrounds who serve the Secretary-General.

An EU battlegroup (EU BG) is a military unit adhering to the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) of the European Union (EU). Often based on contributions from a coalition of member states, each of the eighteen battlegroups consists of a battalion-sized force reinforced with combat support elements (1,500 troops). Two of the battlegroups were to be capable for operational deployment at any one time. The civil power that oversees these battlegroups is the Council of the European Union.

The battlegroup initiative reached full operational capacity on 1 January 2007, but, as of November 2023, they had yet to see operational service. They were developed from existing ad hoc missions that the European Union (EU) had undertaken. The troops and equipment are drawn from the Member States of the European Union under the direction of a "lead nation". In 2004, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan welcomed the plans and emphasised the value and importance of the battlegroups in helping the UN deal with troublespots.

The Global Peace Index (GPI) is a report produced by the Australia-based NGO Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP) which measures the relative position of nations' and regions' peacefulness. The GPI ranks 163 independent states and territories (collectively accounting for 99.7 per cent of the world's population) according to their levels of peacefulness. In the past decade, the GPI has presented trends of increased global violence and less peacefulness.

The GPI (Global Peace Index) is developed in consultation with an international panel of peace experts from peace institutes and think tanks with data collected by the Economist Intelligence Unit. The Index was first launched in 2007, with subsequent reports being released annually. In 2015 it ranked 165 countries, up from 121 in 2007. The study was conceived by Australian technology entrepreneur Steve Killelea, and is endorsed by individuals such as former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Dalai Lama, and 2008 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Martti Ahtisaari. The updated index is released each year at events in London, Washington, D.C., and at the United Nations Secretariat in New York City.

An independence referendum was held in Indonesian-occupied East Timor on 30 August 1999, organised by United Nations Mission in East Timor. The referendum's origins lay with the request made by the President of Indonesia, B. J. Habibie, to the United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan on 27 January 1999, for the United Nations to hold a referendum, whereby East Timor would be given choice of either greater autonomy within Indonesia or independence.

Voters rejected the proposed special autonomy, leading to their separation from Indonesia. This led to mass violence and the destruction of infrastructure in East Timor, before the UN Security Council ratified the resolution on 15 September for the formation of a multinational force (INTERFET) to be immediately sent to East Timor to restore order and security and end the humanitarian crisis. East Timor would officially achieve recognised independence on 20 May 2002.

The Syrian peace process is the ensemble of initiatives and plans to resolve the Syrian civil war. Peace talks were unsuccessful from 2011 until the fall of the Assad regime at the end of 2024. Between December 2024 and March 2025, all major revolutionary factions of the Syrian revolution united to form the Syrian transitional government.

Plans for a negotiated peace between Ba'athist Syria and the Syrian opposition to Bashar al-Assad were ultimately unsuccessful. They began in 2011 with unsuccessful initiatives by the Arab League, the UN Special Envoy on Syria, Russia and Western powers. The negotiating parties were representatives of the Syrian regime and the Syrian opposition. The Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (DAANES) was excluded at the insistence of Turkey. In January 2012 and November 2013, Russia suggested talks in Moscow between the Syrian government and the opposition. In March–May 2012, hopes were raised by a United Nations/Arab League plan coordinated by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In January and February 2014, the Geneva II Conference on Syria took place, organized by then-UN envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi. On 30 October 2015, further talks started in Vienna involving officials from the United States, the European Union, Russia, China, and various regional actors such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and, for the first time, Iran. Peace talks with rebel leadership continued in Astana, Kazakhstan in 2017. The Kazakh officials offered Astana as a neutral venue and "a natural home" for peace negotiations on Syria. The latest major effort to bring about an end to the war started in October 2019 in Geneva with the convening of the Syrian Constitutional Committee to draft a new constitution for Syria under the auspices of the United Nations. The Assad regime's refusal to engage in the peace process was rendered moot by 2024 Syrian opposition offensives which toppled the regime in 11 days.