Politics & Power Quote by Kofi Annan

In Annan's hands, "almost all the states in the world" is both a boast and a warning. The United Nations can claim near-universality, but it can never claim unanimity of values. By foregrounding membership, Annan is quietly reminding listeners that legitimacy is the UN's main currency: it cannot command; it convenes. That seemingly bland fact matters because every UN promise depends on buy-in from governments that often treat rights as negotiable.

The phrase "founded on the principle" does heavy rhetorical lifting. Annan isn't describing reality; he's invoking a constitutional myth meant to discipline power. The subtext is aspirational and corrective: if you signed up, you signed onto a moral baseline, even when you violate it. In a body where sovereign equality gives dictators the same microphone as democrats, "equal worth of every human being" functions as a counterweight to the UN's structural compromise. It insists that the unit of moral concern is the person, not the state.

Context sharpens the intent. Annan led the UN through the post-Cold War era's promise and disillusionment: humanitarian interventions, the Responsibility to Protect debate, and the institutional trauma of Rwanda and Srebrenica, where the gap between principle and action became lethal. Read that way, the line is less Hallmark than damage control with teeth. It's a way of saying: we may be hamstrung by politics, but our founding claim is bigger than the Security Council's vetoes. The UN's power is mostly rhetorical; Annan is using rhetoric to make that power binding.