H?di Annabi was the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-General for Haiti from 2007 and was in charge of 7,800 UN peacekeepers stationed on the island. As head of the mission he had contributed to a steady improvement in the country’s fraught political landscape. He had been credited with overseeing a situation in a blighted country that was turning the corner until the tragedy struck.
A few days before the earthquake he had pledged that the UN would take responsibility for logistics and security for the forthcoming Haitian elections, the first scheduled for February 28. Success would allow the country to enter a virtuous circle where stability and development are mutually reinforcing, he said.
Annabi had been appointed head of the United Nations Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH) after a decade as assistant secretary-general at the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations from 1997 to 2007.
Paying tribute to him, the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon said: “He was a mild man with the heart of a lion; he is remembered by those who knew him for his dry sense of humour, his integrity and his unparalleled work ethic. He was the first in and the last out every day for his entire career.
“He was proud of the UN mission in Haiti and proud of its accomplishments in bringing stability and hope to Haiti’s people.”
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H?di Annabi was born in 1944 and carved out a career for himself as a diplomat in Tunusia’s Foreign Service after studying for a degree in political science at the Institut d’?tudes Politiques de Paris, a degree in English language and literature at the University of Tunis and a master’s degree in international relations at the graduate institute the Universitaire de hautes ?tudes internationales in Geneva. He joined Tunisia’s Foreign Service and was a diplomatic adviser to the Prime Minister. He was then appointed as chairman and general manager of the national news agency, Agence Tunis-Afrique-Presse, in 1979.
He joined the UN in February 1981 and his first job was as the principal officer and then director in the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs in South-East Asia. Here he was involved in the protracted negotiations for a political settlement in Cambodia in the aftermath of its bloody civil war in the 1970s and the brutal regime of the Khmer Rouge. After the Paris agreement was finally reached in 1991, he was involved in establishing the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).
Annabi joined the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO) in 1992 and served as director of the Africa Division from 1993-96. He was appointed officer-in-charge of the Office of Operations of DPKO in 1996.
He had been holding a meeting with a Chinese delegation on the top floor of the UN mission — the five-storey Christopher Hotel in Port-au-Prince — when the earthquake struck. He was the first UN mission chief to die on duty since Sergio Vieira de Mello of Brazil was killed by a bomb in Baghdad in 2003.
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H?di Annabi, UN diplomat, was born on September 4, 1944. He died in the Haiti earthquake on January 12, 2010, aged 65