Thoughts are bound to turn to Kofi Annan, the seventh Secretary-General of the United Nations, as he packs up and leaves his 38th-floor Manhattan office.

For 10 years Annan sat atop an organization in rapid transition. It was a roller-coaster ride, swinging from the heights of global acclaim and a Nobel peace prize to the depths of the United Nation's division over Iraq, protracted battles between the developed and developing countries, and a wave of scandals.

Annan worked in the United Nations with a vision of a co-operative international system driven by a common understanding that collective action is the only way forward.

This will be an important part of the assets he leaves for his successor and for the world.
 
At his farewell news conference on Monday, Annan reviewed his achievements and failures.

Among the achievements, he cited the United Nation's human rights efforts, the war against inequality both between and within states, and the battle for development as epitomized by the Millennium Development Goals. The goals seek to slash a host of social ills, such as extreme hunger and poverty, infant and maternal mortality and lack of access to education and healthcare, all by 2015.

With Annan at the helm, the United Nation's efforts to achieve these goals deserve thundering applause from every corner of the world, though the outcomes vary from country to country. The organization is expected to continue to lead the campaigns.

Annan's choice of the failure to stop the Iraq war as the worst moment of his term betrays the division in the world body.

No one expects that the chasm will vanish when Annan leaves.

His valedictory speech to the General Assembly in September pictured a man with his noble ambitions unfulfilled.

"Together we have pushed some big rocks to the top of the mountain, even if others have slipped from our grasp and rolled back," he said.

This is the real picture of the situation within the world body.

A quiet man who was never bombastic, Annan has a lot to look back on.

He saw first-hand how post-Cold War euphoria led to predictions of a new world order with the United Nations at its centre, and how that descended at times into disillusionment and recriminations following failures on some issues.

Annan has attempted to respond to the critics with an all-embracing vision of UN reform. Over the past two years, the United Nations has published an astonishing number of documents on how to reform itself. Its many reports are a welcome acknowledgement of the serious flaws and problems that plague the organization. They offer many useful assessments of its weaknesses as well as recommendations to remedy them.

(China Daily December 22, 2006)