Documentary shows peacemaker’s only real power lies in persuasion

When Kofi Annan was growing up in Ghana, his father used to dispense advice in proverb form. Annan, now secretary-general of the United Nations, remembers hating his boss and asking his dad whether he should tell the guy off to his face.

Came the reply, “Son, you don’t hit a man on his head if you’ve got your fingers between his teeth.” As usual, Annan had to walk away and interpret the reply, he recalls with a grin. It’s no wonder he grew up to become such a skilled diplomat.

He needs to be. Some consider him king of the world, but Annan commands only a sluggish bureaucracy with a small budget and an amorphous mandate. As a colleague says, “his influence is fundamentally moral.”

In the 90-minute documentary “Kofi Annan: Center of the Storm” (9 p.m., KCET), filmmaker David Grubin looks behind the scenes at how the dapper diplomat uses his powers of persuasion in the quest for peace. Grubin and his team joined Annan during late 2001 and early 2002 as he flew to Afghanistan to encourage reconstruction, to Norway to accept the Nobel Prize and to East Timor to declare its independence.

The show has the feel of an authorized biography, with others speaking of Annan in almost reverential terms. Still, it offers insights into a man now in the eye of the storm as much as ever.

The job can be frustrating, he admits, between the huge expectations of many and the scorn of those who resent globalization. Sometimes, he says, “SG” seems to stand not for “secretary general” but for “scapegoat.”

Annan was influenced not only by his father, but also by Ghana’s hard-won independence in 1957, which he celebrated as a teen -- instilling in him the belief that change is possible. More recently, seeing the 1994 genocide in Rwanda as a U.N. worker convinced him that the world must never sit by amid such horror.

Annan knows the possibilities, as well as the limits, of his job.

“I do not have any armies, nor any major resources at my disposal, but I have a bully pulpit,” he says. “I try to speak for the weak, the poor and the voiceless. I try to encourage governments and urge them to act on their behalf.”

Persuasive indeed.