Boutros Boutros-Ghali quotes

Boutros Boutros-Ghali was an Egyptian diplomat and politician who served as the sixth Secretary-General of the United Nations. His tenure at the UN was marked by complex global conflicts and efforts to reform the organization. He played a significant role in international relations and diplomatic initiatives during the 1990s. Here are 34 of his quotes:

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.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The lesson I learned in Cairo still applies. The only way to deal with bureaucrats is with stealth and sudden violence.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

I believe it will take time to find a solution to the problem. Thus we must have patience.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The problem is when you are writing something in retrospective, it needs a lot of courage not to change, or you will forget a certain reality, and you will just take in consideration your view today.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

There are signs that the system of collective security established in San Francisco nearly 50 years ago [at the founding of the UN] is finally beginning to work as conceived . . . We are on the way to achieving a workable international system.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The failure of the United Nations - My failure is maybe, in retrospective, that I was not enough aggressive with the members of the Security Council.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

We were not realizing that, with just a machete, you can do a genocide.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

I used to say I never talk about my successor, neither about my predecessor.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

There is a greater fatigue concerning the African problem today than five or 10 years ago. The situation now in Africa is worse today than it was 10 years ago.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The change began in Somalia, where we discovered that we were involved in an operation where there was no peace, so there was no more a peacekeeping operation because there was no peace.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

For President Clinton, according to this discussion I had with him, Rwanda was a marginal problem.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

No, because Disneyland is not an independent state.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Since the creation of the United Nations in 1945, over 100 major conflicts around the world have left some 20 million dead.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

We have entered a time of global transition marked by uniquely contradictory trends. Regional and continental associations of States are evolving ways to deepen cooperation and ease some of the contentious characteristics of sovereign and nationalistic rivalries. National boundaries are blurred by advanced communications and global commerce, and by the decisions of States to yield some sovereign prerogatives to larger, common political associations. At the same time, however, fierce new assertions of nationalism and sovereignty spring up, and the cohesion of States is threatened by brutal ethnic, religious, social, cultural or linguistic strife. Social peace is challenged on the one hand by new assertions of discrimination and exclusion and, on the other, by acts of terrorism seeking to undermine evolution and change through democratic means.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

Cultural pluralism is as important as political and multi- party pluralism. Religious, linguistic and cultural pluralism are vitally important hallmarks of a true democracy. We are against cultural hegemony of any sort. Diversity is a mark of a healthy democracy.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

The days of dictatorship are over. ... We have come a long way. Millions of Egyptians and Iraqis have cast their votes at the ballot box. The Palestinians will follow suit.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

So this is why I'm always say happy that somebody mentions Rwanda, because behind Rwanda, we have Africa.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

But at the beginning, our definition of the genocide was what happened to Armenia in 1917 or 1919, it's happened to the Jew in Europe, and we were not realizing - In our point of view, they have not the tools to do a genocide.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali

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.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali