Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Boutros Boutros-Ghaliwas an Egyptian politician and diplomat who was the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nationsfrom January 1992 to December 1996. An academic and former Vice Foreign Minister of Egypt, Boutros-Ghali oversaw the UN at a time when it dealt with several world crises, including the break-up of Yugoslavia and the Rwandan Genocide. He was then the first Secretary-General of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie from November 1997 to December 2002...
NationalityEgyptian
ProfessionPublic Servant
Date of Birth14 November 1922
CountryEgypt
Rwanda was considered a second-class operation because it was a small country, we had been able to maintain a kind of status quo. They were negotiating, they'd accepted the new peace project, so we were under the impression that everything would be solved easily.
In Yugoslavia, I'd asked for additional forces too. I even went to meet the French prime minister, and I proposed additional forces... Nobody wanted to send troops.
For us, genocide was the gas chamber - what happened in Germany. We were not able to realize that with the machete you can create a genocide.
I will continue to work for the advancement of freedoms in Egypt and the Arab world until I drop dead. ... Education itself - which can and should play an important role in the apprenticeship of tolerance and respect for other people - sometimes encourages identitarian closure, or even extremist behaviour ... It is therefore vital to ensure that education does not encourage rejection of other people or identitarian closure, but that on the contrary it encourages knowledge and respect for other cultures, other religions and other ways of being and living.
Only stupid people don't change their minds.
Co-operative enterprises provide the organisational means whereby a significant proportion of humanity is able to take into its own hands the tasks of creating productive employment, overcoming poverty and achieving social integration.
It would be some time before I fully realized 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.
A genocide in Africa has not received the same attention that genocide in Europe or genocide in Turkey or genocide in other part of the world. There is still this kind of basic discrimination against the African people and the African problems.
Democracy is an objective. Democratization is a process. Democratization serves the cause of peace because it offers the possibility of justice and of progressive change without force.
It has long been recognized that an essential element in protecting human rights was a widespread knowledge among the population of what their rights are and how they can be defended.
Water will be more important than oil this century
The next war in the Middle East will be fought over water, not politics
The lesson I learned in Cairo still applies. The only way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence.
While the broad principles of democracy are universal, the fact remains that their application varies considerably ... We are at the beginning of the road, at the very beginning. We still have a long way to go.