Background
Endalkachew Makonnen was born on September 1927, in Addis Ababa to Ras Bitwoded Makonnen, once President of the Ethiopian senate and head of a noble Shoan family.
Endalkachew Makonnen was born on September 1927, in Addis Ababa to Ras Bitwoded Makonnen, once President of the Ethiopian senate and head of a noble Shoan family.
Educated at the Haile Selassie Secondary School in Addis Ababa, then went to Exeter and Oxford Universities, where he read politics, philosophy and economics, graduating in 1950
He started his career with the Ethiopian Foreign Service and rose to Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs in 1954, being in the Ethiopian delegation to the anti-colonial Bandung conference in 1955. In 1959 he was Ethiopian Ambassador to London, returning home in 1961 to become Minister of Commerce and Industry and chairman of Ethiopia’s Coffee Board.
In 1966 he became Permanent Representative of Ethiopia to the United Nations, with cabinet rank, and a member of the Security Council from 1966 to 1969, twice serving as the Security Council President. He has also been chairman of a number of sessions of the Economic Commission for Africa at its meetings held in its headquarters in Addis Ababa.
He was elected vice-president of the World Alliance of the YMCA at its last meeting in Tokyo. In 1969 he was appointed Minister for Communications, Telecommunications and Posts, but his biggest test came when he was chosen by the African countries as their representative to stand for the post of Secretary-General of the United Nations on the resignation of U Thant. On December 22, 1971, after a gruelling duel in the Security Council, with the big powers using their veto several times, he was defeated by Dr Kurt Waldheim.
Lij Endelkachew had previously served in a variety of diplomatic and political posts. He was Ethiopian Ambassador to Britain, and later Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and was one of the people under consideration for the post of UN Secretary General in 1972, before Kurt Waldheim was appointed. He had also served as Minister for Posts and Communications, and had served as the International President of the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA).
An urbane, Oxford-educated figure from an aristocratic Shoan family, who collects biographical works and writings as a hobby. One of his country’s most distinguished ambassadors, a permanent representative to the United Nations and President of the Security Council. He is best remembered for the long campaign he fought but lost, as Africa’s candidate, for the Secretary-General’s post at the United Nations in December 1971.