First-ever visit of the UN Secretary-General to the House of FIFA

The first-ever visit of a United Nations Secretary-General to the headquarters of FIFA will take place on 24 January 2006 when Kofi Annan will be received by FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter in Zurich. 

In the agenda of their meeting is the session of the World Economic Forum in which they will participate in Davos (Switzerland) the next day as well as the cooperation of FIFA and the UN in projects all over the world. A joint press conference to be held at 16h15 CET in the FIFA Sonnenberg building will close this historic visit.

On 25 January 2006, the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the IOC President Jacques Rogge and the FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter will take part in the Opening Media Lunch of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which this year will highlight the social and cultural importance of football and sport in general. With the theme “The Impact of Sports in the World”, that Media Lunch will be followed the next day by a Public Session in which FIFA will also participate, with the title “Can a Ball Change the World? The Role of Sports in Development”.

The long-standing partnership of the UN and many of its bodies and agencies with FIFA in the development of humanitarian programmes and the support that the values of sport and football can give to those projects will be another of the matters featured in the meeting at the FIFA House, in which the UN Secretary-General returns the visit that the FIFA President made to the UN headquarters in New York in June 1999.

(fifa.com)