Essy, Amara

▪ 2003

      On July 9, 2002, Amara Essy of Côte d' Ivoire became secretary-general of the newly established 53-country African Union (AU), which replaced the 39-year-old Organization of African Unity (OAU). Essy, a career diplomat, was charged with leading the new body, a difficult task given the continent's ethnic, religious, economic, and political differences and the fact that the AU was granted dramatically enhanced powers in comparison with the OAU. Whereas the OAU had been required to respect each member's territorial sovereignty, the AU could intervene in the internal affairs of countries to stop crimes against humanity, violations of human rights, and genocide. In general, the AU was modeled after the European Union, and its creators envisioned that the AU would eventually have peacekeeping troops, a regional court, a central bank, a legislature, a security council, and a single currency, similar to that of the EU's euro. Nevertheless, the principal aim of the AU was to promote economic growth to ease poverty throughout Africa.

      Essy was born on Dec. 20, 1944, in Bouaké, Côte d'Ivoire. He studied in Asia, Europe, and South America, earning a degree in public law from the University of Poitiers, France. He was fluent in several languages, including English, French, and Portuguese—Africa's three most-common European languages. A practicing Muslim, Essy married a Roman Catholic, despite the fact that interfaith marriages were quite uncommon in Côte d'Ivoire.

      Essy's diplomatic career began in the early 1970s. After serving as a counselor in the Côte d'Ivoire embassy in Brazil, he became a counselor at Côte d'Ivoire's mission to the United Nations. In 1975 he was appointed ambassador to Switzerland, where he also served as Côte d'Ivoire's European representative to the UN and as president of the Group of 77 (an organization of nonaligned less-developed countries).

      In 1981 Essy was appointed Côte d'Ivoire's representative to the UN in New York, and during that decade he served as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary for Argentina and Cuba. Gaining great respect for his diplomatic capabilities, he went on to serve as vice president of the UN General Assembly (1988–89) and as its president (1994–95). He also served as president of the UN Security Council in January 1990. That year he was appointed Côte d'Ivoire's minister of foreign affairs, a position he continued to hold until shortly after a coup against the government in 1999.

      In 1997, following the decision by the U.S. to block the reselection of Boutros Boutros-Ghali as UN secretary-general, Essy was the favoured candidate of the French, who threatened to veto the U.S.-backed Kofi Annan. That year Essy also launched a challenge against Tanzanian Salim Ahmed Salim (who was backed by Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi) for head of the OAU, but Essy withdrew before its annual summit, claiming that he did not want to divide Africa. In 2000 he was Annan's special envoy to the Central African Republic. In July 2001, after eight rounds of voting in Lusaka, Zambia, Essy was elected to a four-year term as head of the OAU (and thus the AU from 2002).

Michael I. Levy

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