Ban Ki-moon

Secretary-General of the United Nations (2007–16)

• Born: June 13, 1944
• Place of Birth: Eumseong, Korea

Ban Ki-moon was elected secretary-general of the United Nations (UN) in October 2006, and he held that position until 2016. When he took office in January 2007, he became the eighth person to preside over the 192-member body. As secretary-general, Ban served as the UN's chief administrative officer and its most important spokesperson.

Prior to being elected the secretary-general of the UN, Ban served in South Korea's ministry of foreign affairs. When he took over leadership of the UN, he inherited an organization whose international credibility had suffered in the aftermath of a series of management missteps and scandals. Under Ban's leadership, the UN renewed its commitment to intervening in some of the most serious world crises. Ban identified several immediate concerns, including the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan, the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation in North Korea, the war in Iraq, and the continuing conflict in the Middle East.

Background

Ban Ki-moon was born in Japanese-occupied Korea on June 13, 1944, in the farming village of Eumseong. He is the eldest of six children. He was raised in the nearby town of Chungju in Chungcheong Province. Ban experienced the hardships of displacement by war firsthand. To seek refuge from the violence of the Korean War, Ban's family was forced to abandon their home for a time and flee to a remote mountain area.

In 1962, as a high school student, Ban met his future wife, Yoo Soon-taek, with whom he would eventually have three children. In that same year, Ban, a diligent student who excelled at the study of English, won a Red Cross–sponsored academic competition. His prize was a trip to the United States, during which the eighteen-year-old Ban was part of a group that met with President John F. Kennedy at the White House. Ban later said that the experience was what sparked his interest in politics and diplomacy.

Six years later, in 1970, Ban graduated with a bachelor's degree in international relations from Seoul National University. In 1985, he earned a master's degree in public administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Career Diplomat

Ban went on to a thirty-year-long career in South Korea's foreign service. In 1975, he was assigned to New York to work on the staff of the South Korean Home Office at the UN. Three years later, he was appointed secretary of his country's permanent mission to the UN. Ban went on to hold high-ranking diplomatic posts in South Korea's embassies in New Delhi and Washington, DC.

Ban also served as the director of the UN division at the South Korean foreign ministry's headquarters in Seoul and later as his country's ambassador to Austria. In 1999, during the time of his ambassadorship in Vienna, Ban chaired the preparatory commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization. Ban's interest and expertise in the arena of nuclear nonproliferation dates back to 1992, when he served as vice chair of the South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission. The commission had been created as a result of the adoption of the landmark Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

During the fifty-sixth UN General Assembly, when South Korea assumed the presidency of that body, Ban was tapped to serve as the chief of staff to General Assembly president Han Seung-soo during his one-year term of office. The assembly opened its new session the day after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC. Ban's first official action was to initiate the adoption of a resolution condemning the attacks. He also worked to restore calm to an organization that was in a state of shock.

In 2004, Ban was named South Korea's minister of foreign affairs and trade, a position he held until his election as UN secretary-general. As foreign minister, he advised South Korea's president on foreign policy and national security issues. He also served as the government's deputy minister for policy planning and director-general of American affairs.

In 2005, Ban, as foreign minister, played a critical role in facilitating the Six-Party Talks that resulted in the adoption of an updated joint statement aimed at scuttling North Korea's nuclear weapons ambitions. In recognition of his contributions to his country, Ban has been awarded South Korea's Highest Order of Service Merit three times, in 1975, 1986, and 2006.

UN Secretary-General

Ban Ki-moon was sworn in as the eighth secretary-general of the UN at the beginning of 2007. He was only the second Asian secretary-general in the UN's history; the first was U Thant of Burma, who served from 1961 to 1971. Ban succeeded the charismatic and sometimes controversial Kofi Annan of Ghana, who had completed two consecutive terms (1997–2006) in the position.

Upon his selection as secretary-general, Ban sought to allay critics' fears that his quiet, discreet demeanor would prevent him from exercising tough, outspoken global leadership. He offered assurances that his consensus-driven management style reflected Asian cultural values rather than personal indecisiveness. He pledged that under his direction, the UN would generate less rhetoric and more action. In response to the most pressing issues facing the world community, Ban stated his intention to pursue a spirit of "principled pragmatism."

During his tenure as secretary-general, Ban laid out several priorities for the fulfillment of the UN's mission as a global voice of moral conscience. The genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan topped his agenda; under his leadership, the UN dispatched some 26,000 peacekeepers to Sudan in an effort to prevent a deepening of humanitarian and ecological catastrophes fueled by sectarian violence and competition over scarce resources, especially water.

Ban also embarked on a campaign to motivate rich nations to provide increased aid, debt relief, and market access to countries in the developing world. He argued that this effort, in concert with the UN Millennium Development Goals—a series of long-term benchmarks aimed at uplifting the poorest of the world's poor—could lay the foundation for economic stability, which, in turn, would promote peace and justice.

In a similar vein, Ban helped organize a June 2008 UN Food and Agriculture Organization summit. The summit aimed to address the global crisis of skyrocketing food prices, a crisis precipitated by drought, soaring energy costs, and the diversion of crops to manufacture biofuel. Ban called for world farm production to increase 50 percent by 2030. Reducing hunger and malnutrition, he emphasized, is not only a moral imperative but also a means of promoting political stability in those developing nations where food prices and shortages have sparked riots.

Ban made global warming another key priority of his tenure. He helped facilitate a UN climate change conference in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007 and has repeatedly reaffirmed the urgency of negotiating a new agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement in which thirty-seven industrialized countries pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by specific targets, which was set to expire in 2012. (In December 2012, the agreement was extended to 2020.) To publicize his cause, Ban became the first UN secretary-general to visit Antarctica, where glacial melting has dramatically illustrated the pace of climate change.

In May 2008, Ban visited Burma in the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis, which had caused widespread destruction. The storm killed more than 100,000 Burmese, left thousands more unaccounted for, and rendered more than 2.5 million homeless. Ban undertook a delicate diplomatic mission to pressure Burma's ruling military junta, which had stubbornly resisted most international offers of help, to allow more relief supplies, aid workers, and disaster-management specialists into the devastated country.

During his tenure, the typically low-key Ban largely avoided the spotlight that was frequently sought out by his high-profile predecessor Kofi Annan. However, he did not hesitate to respond strongly to his critics. In June 2008, he angrily rejected charges by some advocacy groups that his unprecedented refusal to release the names of those serving on his search committee designated to fill the highly sensitive post of UN human rights advocate was undermining trust in the selection process. The lack of transparency, Ban maintained, was necessary to shield the decision from political pressures.

In January 2010, Ban helped rally international relief efforts following an earthquake in Haiti that killed over 100,000 people. Some $10 billion in financial assistance was raised.

In 2011, Ban stood unopposed for a second term as secretary-general and was unanimously approved by both the Security Council and the General Assembly. During his second five-year term, which began on January 1, 2012, Ban focused mainly on conflicts in the Middle East, including the Syrian Civil War and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and issues of equality worldwide, with particular attention to LGBT rights. In September 2014, he led the Climate Summit 2014 in New York City, referred to by some as the Ban Ki-moon Summit. When the Paris Agreement on climate change was adopted by over 190 parties in 2015, the same year in which the member states under his leadership had agreed to an agenda of seventeen official sustainable development goals to reach by 2030, he immediately gave a speech lauding the Paris Agreement, which went into effect the following year, as a significant step.

After his successor, António Guterres, was appointed in October 2016, Ban stepped down as UN secretary-general at the end of December. Later in 2017, he was elected to head the Ethics Commission of the International Olympic Committee. Remaining active, particularly in the area of climate change, he became a co-chair of the newly established Ban Ki-moon Centre for Global Citizens in 2018, and in 2020 he was honored with a Sunhak Peace Prize. He served as chair of the Boao Forum for Asia and honorary chair of Yonsei University's Institute for Global Engagement and Empowerment. He also served as council chair of the Global Green Growth Institute. Furthermore, he was deputy chair of The Elders, an organization founded by Nelson Mandela to bring together former leaders advocating for human rights, justice, peace, and sustainability.

Ban remained a respected voice in international politics and policy. He was welcomed at events around the world as a speaker. On June 26, 2024, he addressed the UN Security Council. He spoke about the plight of children in war zones, saying it was a moral obligation for everyone to protect them, and violence against women and girls. Ban referred to a UN report's findings that in 2023, violations against children increased 21 percent and killing and wounding of children increased 35 percent. He referenced his own experiences as a child during the Korean War. B said that the Security Council was ineffective in protecting these victims.

Bibliography

Aldridge, Rebecca. Ban Ki-moon. New York: Chelsea, 2009. Print.

"Ban Ki-Moon." International Olympic Committee, 2024, olympics.com/ioc/olympism-in-action/speakers/ban-ki-moon. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024.

"Ban Ki-moon Fast Facts." CNN, 3 July 2020, www.cnn.com/2012/12/10/world/ban-ki-moon---fast-facts/index.html. Accessed 4 Mar. 2021.

Charbonneau, Louis. "UN Assembly Approves Second Term for UN Chief Ban." Reuters. Thomson, 21 June 2011. Web. 14 Jan. 2015.

Gowan, Richard. "'Less Bound to the Desk': Ban Ki-moon, the UN, and Preventive Diplomacy." Global Governance 18.4 (2012): 387–404. Print.

Ki-Moon, Ban. "The UN Security Council Must Step Up to Protect Children in Armed Conflict." The Elders, 27 June 2024, theelders.org/news/un-security-council-must-step-protect-children-armed-conflict. Accessed 4 Oct. 2024.