I didn't like being caned in school - Kofi Annan

Former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Mr. Kofi Annan, has revealed in his newly published memoirs, how unhappy he was with corporal punishment and bullying in Ghanaian schools.

He highlighted in an interview with the BBC how prevailing corporal punishment and bullying were, especially in boarding schools in Ghana when he was growing up.

“I was challenging authority, as they used to say… there was quite a bit of bullying and sometimes I will try and defend the little ones or I myself will be given some lines to write,” he narrated.

He went on to add that sometimes “you get caned either in the palm or on the buttocks… I didn’t like that at all.”

With human rights groups in Ghana campaigning against corporal punishment in schools, it will seem that the celebrated former Secretary General of the world body has given the campaign a boost.

Mr. Annan in the same interview touched on some shortcomings of the UN as an international body especially after it failed to stop the Rwanda Genocide in 1994.