Do we like them?

Do we like Kofi Annan?

Our score: 8 out of 10. A career spent on peace, health, rights and climate, with real failures on his watch that he is still judged for.

Kofi Annan was born in 1938 in Kumasi, then the Gold Coast, into an aristocratic family. He went to the Methodist-founded Mfantsipim school, then studied in Ghana, Minnesota, Geneva and at MIT. He started at the World Health Organisation in 1962 and worked his way up the UN's own ranks.

He became head of UN peacekeeping in 1993 and Secretary-General in 1997, the first Black African and the first career UN staffer to lead it. He served two terms, is credited with revitalising the institution, and shared the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize with the UN.

The stain is Rwanda. While he ran peacekeeping, more than 800,000 Rwandans were killed in the 1994 genocide, and force commander Roméo Dallaire blamed him for ignoring warnings and refusing permission to raid arms caches. Annan made an official apology to Rwanda in 1998, and the Rwandan foreign minister publicly rebuked him for it. Critics also blame him over the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, though Dutch PM Ruud Lubbers defended him.

On the harm check, he comes out well. In 2001 he backed UN benefits for same-sex partners despite opposition from Islamic nations, and in 2003 told a UN event “We should be much more tolerant and compassionate.” In 2006 he said gay men must be included in the AIDS response. He did not publicly back same-sex marriage, though a UN spokesman said he privately did.

Nothing recent has turned up, as he died in 2018. Nobody has found harmful words of his own, and the people who criticise him do it over institutional failures, not hate. That is a long way from a clean sheet, though.