Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Egyptian diplomat

• Born: November 14, 1922
• Birthplace: Cairo, Egypt
• Died: February 16, 2016
• Place of death: Cairo, Egypt

Boutros-Ghali is best known for his extensive involvement in international affairs as a diplomat, jurist, and scholar. An Egyptian statesman who became the first United Nations secretary-general from an Arab nation, Boutros-Ghali strongly supported mediation in post–Cold War conflicts, led the international celebration of the United Nations’ fiftieth anniversary, and proposed organizational reforms that were opposed by the United States.

Early Life

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (BEW-trohs-GAH-lee), descended from one of Egypt’s most distinguished and wealthy Coptic Christian families, was born the grandson of former Egyptian prime minister Boutros Pasha Ghali. Boutros-Ghali received a bachelor of laws degree from Cairo University in 1946 and earned his doctorate in international law from the University of Paris in 1949 with a thesis on the study of regional organizations. The University of Paris also awarded him separate diplomas in political science, economics, and public law.

In addition to holding a professorship in international law and international relations at Cairo University from 1949 to 1977, Boutros-Ghali traveled extensively, lecturing at universities in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America, and North America. Among other early honors, he was a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University from 1954 to 1955, director of the Centre of Research at The Hague Academy of International Law from 1963 to 1964, and a visiting professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Paris from 1967 to 1968.

As a public figure in an Islamic society, Boutros-Ghali faced the challenges of being a Coptic Christian married to a Jewish woman, Leia Maria Boutros-Ghali. He developed a reputation for not liking to delegate authority or meet with the press and for being a poor communicator in English, his third language. Boutros-Ghali was known for being a brilliant analyst who dissected problems from all possible angles, and his training helped him develop an intellectual arrogance that would compel him to stand up to authorities even when it was politically detrimental to do so.

Life’s Work

Boutros-Ghali first gained international notice when he was appointed Egypt’s minister of state for foreign affairs in October 1977, after his predecessor resigned in protest against Egyptian-Israeli rapprochement. Boutros-Ghali accompanied Egyptian president Anwar el-Sadat on his historic first trip to Jerusalem to address the Israeli Knesset, and he also helped orchestrate the landmark negotiations between Egypt and Israel at the Camp David Summit Conference held in the United States in 1978 under the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Boutros-Ghali headed Egypt’s delegation to the United Nations General Assembly in 1979, a role he reprised for the 1982 and 1990 sessions following Sadat’s assassination in October 1981.

In addition to representing Egypt in meetings of the Organisation of African Unity, the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries (also called the Non-Aligned Movement), and the Conference of Heads of State of Africa and France, Boutros-Ghali served as vice president of the Socialist International; president of the Egyptian Society of International Law, the Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, and the African Society of Political Studies; and part of the secretariat of Egypt's National Democratic Party. He has variously been a member of the International Law Commission, the International Commission of Jurists, the Institute of International Law, the International Institute of Human Rights, the Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques, the Istituto Affari Internazionali, the scientific committee of the Académie Mondiale pour la Paix, the Curatorium administrative council of The Hague Academy of International Law, the International Labour Organization's Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations, and the central committee and political bureau of the Arab Socialist Union. He also founded the publications Alahram Iqtisadi, which he edited from 1960 to 1975, and Al-Seyassa Al-Dawlia, which he edited until 1991.

Having become a member of the Parliament of Egypt in 1987, Boutros-Ghali served as Egypt’s deputy prime minister for foreign affairs from May 1991 until December 3, 1991, when he was appointed by the General Assembly of the United Nations as its sixth secretary-general. He began his five-year term on January 1, 1992, as the first secretary-general following the Cold War and also the first from either Africa or the Arab world. Within Boutros-Ghali's first fourteen months in office, the United Nations conducted seventeen different peacekeeping operations, which severely depleted its financial resources. Policy disagreements over the lengthy, difficult, and eventually disastrous UN peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somalia, and Rwanda led to much internationally discussed evaluation of his administration by the major powers. Boutros-Ghali responded by rebuking several UN member states for not supporting the post–Cold War peacekeeping efforts that he championed in Africa and accusing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) of Eurocentrism. Failure of the parties involved to agree on an effective strategy to end the Yugoslav war placed UN peacekeepers in Bosnia in an “untenable” position, motivating Boutros-Ghali to propose reforms that included formation of a standing rapid-response military force under UN command.

During his term as secretary-general, Boutros-Ghali received numerous honors from over twenty-four countries. Notable credits from North America include honorary degrees from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC; Laval University in Quebec City, Quebec; the Université de Moncton in Moncton, New Brunswick; and Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. Additional honorary doctorates were awarded by the Université Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; the Institute of State and Law of the Russian Academy of Sciences; the University of Bucharest in Romania; Baku State University in Azerbaijan; Yerevan State University in Armenia; the University of Haifa in Israel; the University of Vienna in Austria; Montesquieu University in Bordeaux, France; Korea University in Seoul, South Korea; and the University of Melbourne in Australia. Boutros-Ghali was the recipient of the "Man of Peace" award, sponsored by the Italian-based Together for Peace Foundation, in 1993; the Arthur A. Houghton Jr. Star Crystal Award for Excellence from the African-American Institute, now the Africa-America Institute, in 1993; the Christian A. Herter Memorial Award from the World Affairs Council of Boston, now WorldBoston, in 1993; and the Onassis International Award for International Understanding and Social Achievement in 1995.

After initially indicating his desire to serve only one term, Boutros-Ghali informed United States secretary of state Warren Christopher in June 1996 that he would seek reelection at age seventy-four, later stating, “Only stupid people never change their minds.” Although six months earlier US president Bill Clinton had publicly thanked him for his “leadership, energy, resolve, and vision of the world for the next fifty years,” Clinton's administration abruptly declared that it would veto his reelection following his numerous disputes with US ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright. Article 15 of the UN charter states that “the Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council,” but the real power of appointment resides with the fifteen-nation Security Council’s five permanent members—the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, and Russia—each of which possesses veto power. His reelection was supported by most African nations and fourteen of fifteen Security Council members, with his supporters hoping that the other “Big Five” countries would retaliate by vetoing all candidates supported by the United States, thus forcing the Security Council to extend Boutros-Ghali’s term, as it had done in 1950 when Trygve Lie was secretary-general.

Clinton claimed that Boutros-Ghali had not done enough to reduce United Nations bureaucracy, even though he had cut departments and offices from twenty to twelve and high-level posts in the secretariat from forty-eight to thirty-seven (40 percent less than ten years before); phased out more than one thousand positions, representing a staff reduction of 20 percent from 1986; and implemented a zero-growth budget that included reductions of $117 million, later to include another $154 million. Many felt the United States vetoed Boutros-Ghali because US policy makers considered his leadership “too independent” and chose to make him a “scapegoat for American domestic politics,” with Clinton’s Democratic Party hoping to deny its Republican opponents the opportunity to attack Clinton's foreign policy as he sought reelection at the end of 1996. The American image of the United Nations had become clouded at the beginning of the year, when Boutros-Ghali had stood in the way of bombing Serbs in Bosnia. Republican Party presidential candidate Bob Dole became upset even at the sound of Boutros-Ghali’s name and stated that if he were elected, a United Nations commander would never order US troops into battle.

With US opposition deciding for 184 other countries, Boutros-Ghali became the first secretary-general since the creation of the United Nations in 1945 to serve only one term. He was succeeded by Kofi Annan from Ghana, the United Nations’ first black African secretary-general, on January 1, 1997. Boutros-Ghali left Annan with the challenge of developing reforms to increase United Nations economic efficiency and responsiveness, convincing the United States to pay more than $1.5 billion in back dues, and dealing with Iraq’s defiance of weapons inspections in the face of the US threat of military intervention.

From 1997 to 2002, Boutros-Ghali was secretary-general of the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, an association of over fifty nations with strong ties to the French language and culture that promotes democracy, human rights, and the use of French as the international language in politics and business. He next served as chairman of the board of the South Centre, an intergovernmental agency headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, that promotes cooperation among nonaligned developing countries, from 2003 to 2006. Also in 2003, Boutros-Ghali became the director of the Egyptian National Council of Human Rights, a post he held until 2012. In 2007, he became president of The Hague Academy's Curatorium and also helped launch the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an effort to engage citizens worldwide in UN affairs through a consultative assembly. The campaign is in line with his belief that multiculturalism is the essence of democracy, whether local or global. In 2009, he joined the international jury of the Prize for Conflict Prevention, awarded annually by the Fondation Chirac.

The author of more than one hundred publications in Arabic, French, and English, Boutros-Ghali published his memoirs of his term as secretary-general, Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga, in 1999. In it, he accuses the administration of President Clinton of trying to micromanage him and being duplicitous in order to court US public opinion. “Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness,” he wrote. Elsewhere, he remarked even more bluntly, “An excessive concentration of power is an impediment to democracy.” He was equally direct when President George W. Bush launched an attack on Iraq in 2003, calling it illegal and a dangerous precedent that could impair the United Nations’ ability to deal with crises diplomatically.

Significance

Boutros Boutros-Ghali is an Egyptian diplomat and scholar who served as United Nations secretary-general from 1992 to 1996, the first person from the Arab world and the first from Africa to hold the post. He considered his biggest success to be persuading the international community to focus on how to cope with the problems of globalization as the planet’s population grew exponentially. This was accomplished by four major conferences that offered guidelines for the twenty-first century: the UN Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992; the World Conference on Human Rights, held in Vienna in 1993; the International Conference on Population and Development, held in Cairo in 1994; and the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995. He considered his biggest failure to be his inability to convince the United States of the importance of the United Nations. Boutros-Ghali’s participation in the affairs of international law, human rights, economic and social development, decolonization, the Middle East question, international humanitarian law, the rights of ethnic and other minorities, nonalignment, development in the Mediterranean region, and Afro-Arab cooperation extended over four decades.

Boutros-Ghali could be bitingly outspoken and dismissive, which often offended other countries, most frequently the United States, but his remarks came from frustration with what he perceived as imbalances in the world’s attention to major problems. He once called the civil war in Bosnia and Herzegovina a “rich man’s war” that attracted attention while the genocide in Rwanda went largely ignored. However, signal political successes in Africa took place during his tenure as secretary-general, most notably the first nonracial election in South Africa. He continued his commitment to improving conditions in Africa and other parts of the Global South in his various posts after he left the United Nations, and in a 2006 interview he said that he was cautiously optimistic that democracy would become firmly established, if slowly, in his home region of the Middle East.

Bibliography

Barnett, Michael N. “Bringing in the New World Order: Liberalism, Legitimacy, and the United Nations.” World Politics 49.4 (1997): 526–51. Print. Containing information on An Agenda for Peace by Boutros-Ghali, this report evaluates the development of a liberal international order that is assisted by the United Nations and concludes that force alone cannot sustain order.

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. "Boutros Boutros-Ghali: 'The Power of the Muslim Brotherhood Has Been Exaggerated.'" Interview by Elisabeth Braw. Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 25 Mar. 2011. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. "The Challenges of Preventive Diplomacy: The Role of the United Nations and Its Secretary-General." History and Hope: The International Humanitarian Reader. Ed. Kevin M. Cahill. New York: Fordham UP, 2013. 178–91. Print.

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. Egypt’s Road to Jerusalem: A Diplomat’s Story of the Struggle for Peace in the Middle East. New York: Random, 1997. Print. Boutros-Ghali describes the rocky road toward Middle East peace with his personal diary of the tense international drama, beginning with Sadat’s sudden trip to Jerusalem and including the Camp David agreements.

Boutros-Ghali, Boutros. Unvanquished: A US-UN Saga. New York: Random, 1999. Print. Boutros-Ghali presents a candid and sometimes bitter chronicle of his five years as secretary-general. He focuses on his confrontations with the United States, including how the administration of President Bill Clinton prevented him from serving a second term.

Buckley, William F., Jr. “The Price of Boutros Boutros-Ghali.” National Review 31 Dec. 1996: 58–59. Print. This article evaluates why Clinton opposed a second term for Boutros-Ghali and discusses France’s support of Boutros-Ghali, the involvement of US troops in Bosnia under United Nations authority, and unpaid US dues to the United Nations.

Burgess, Stephen F. The United Nations under Boutros Boutros-Ghali, 1992–1997. Lanham: Scarecrow, 2001. Print. Chronicles the history of the United Nations during Boutros-Ghali’s term as secretary-general, including his agenda for peace, his successes in Cambodia and Mozambique, and his failures in Angola and Somalia.

King, Elisabeth, and Robert O. Matthews. "A New Agenda for Peace." International Journal 67.2 (2012): 275–93. Print.

Kitfield, James. “Not So United.” National Journal 11 Jan. 1997: 69–72. Print. This well-written article describes the strained political relationships that developed between the United States and United Nations when some congressional policy makers, after deciding that Boutros-Ghali had resisted much-needed organizational reforms, generated pressure by refusing to pay the over $1.5 billion the United States owed the United Nations and vetoing Boutros-Ghali’s reelection.

McGeary, Johanna. “The Unforgiven.” Time, 2 Dec. 1996. Print. This article describes Boutros-Ghali’s relationship with the United States, the reasons Clinton wanted his resignation, and the fourteen of fifteen Security Council members who voted for his reinstatement.

Rajan, M. S., ed. United Nations at Fifty and Beyond. New Delhi: Lancers, 1996. Print. This book was published under the auspices of the Indian Society of International Law in New Delhi and contains papers from a 1995 seminar held in New Delhi to commemorate the United Nations’ fiftieth anniversary.

United Nations. The United Nations and Human Rights, 1945–1995. New York: UN Dept. of Public Information, 1995. Print. With an introduction by Boutros-Ghali, this book celebrates the United Nations’ fiftieth anniversary by highlighting its most significant contributions.

Williams, Ian. “Must the UN Find a New Pope?” New Statesman 6 Sept. 1996: 20–21. Print. This article evaluates the reasons for the United States’ opposition to Boutros-Ghali’s reelection for political reasons versus concern for the financial soundness of the United Nations.