Appointed sixth secretary-general of the United Nations in November 1991, Egyptian lawyer, academic, civil servant, and diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali (born 1922) sought to reassert the leadership role of the United Nations in contemporary world affairs.

Boutros Boutros-Ghali was born on November 14, 1922, into one of the Egyptian Coptic community's most influential and affluent families. His father, Yusuf, served at one time as the country's finance minister, while a grandfather had been premier of Egypt from 1908 until his assassination in 1910. Boutros-Ghali's own cosmopolitanism and fluency in English and French, in addition to Arabic, can be traced to his patrician upbringing and formal schooling. After completing a law degree in 1946 at Cairo University, he spent the next four years in France, earning diplomas in higher studies in public law and in economics, as well as a Ph.D. in international law from Paris University in 1949.

Returning to Egypt, Boutros-Ghali became professor of international...