Check out Kofi Annan’s farwell address (full text version).
I am listening to I Can by Nas as I blog. I thought it was appropriate as I read Annan’s speech. He said he learned five lessons. I have put the five lessons in my own words and I have placed a quote bellow each lesson. The quote is one that jumped out at me or that I liked.

1. Security is dependent on everyone’s secutiry.
   He said, “That means that respect for national sovereignty can no longer be used as a shield by governments intent on massacring their own people, or as an excuse for the rest of us to do nothing when such heinous crimes are committed.”
2. Not only are we dependent upon each other’s security, but one another’s welfare as well.
   He said: It is not realistic to think that some people can go on deriving great benefits from globalization while billions of their fellow human beings are left in abject poverty, or even thrown into it.”
3. Security and development cannot be divorced from human rights and the rule of law.
   He said: “In short, human rights and the rule of law are vital to global security and prosperity. As Truman said, “We must, once and for all, prove by our acts conclusively that Right Has Might.”That is why this country has historically been in the vanguard of the global human rights movement. But that lead can only be maintained if America remains true to its principles, including in the struggle against terrorism.When it appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused.”
4. There is a need to enforce mutual accountability not just at the domestic level, but the international level as well.
   He said: As things stand, accountability between states is highly skewed. Poor and weak states are easily held to account, because they need foreign assistance. But large and powerful states, whose actions have the greatest impact on others, can be constrained only by their own people, working through their domestic institutions.”

   “And today they need to take into account also the views of what, in UN jargon, we call “non-state actors”. I mean commercial corporations, charities and pressure groups, labour unions, philanthropic foundations, universities and think tanks – all the myriad forms in which people come together voluntarily to think about, or try to change, the world.”

5. To accomplish all this we all need to work together multilaterally (at the international level, institutional, etc.).
   He said: “In fact, it is only through multilateral institutions that states can hold each other to account. And that makes it very important to organize those institutions in a fair and democratic way, giving the poor and the weak some influence over the actions of the rich and the strong.”

Annan summarized thes points in five words: collective responsibility, global solidarity, the rule of law, mutual accountability, and multilateralism.  I thought it was a great speech.