UN Secretary-General

According to the Charter of the United Nations, the Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council.

Kofi Annan's predecessors as Secretary-General were:

Trygve Lie (Norway), February 1946 to his resignation in November 1952.

Dag Hammarskjöld (Sweden), April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in Congo September 1961;

U Thant (Burma, now Myanmar), acting Secretary-General November 1961 and Secretary-General November 1962 to December 1971;

Kurt Waldheim (Austria), January 1972 to December 1981;

Javier Pérez de Cuéllar (Peru), January 1982 to December 1991;

Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt), January 1992 to December 1996.