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| Top diplomat: He was South Korea's foreign minister. David Karp/AP |
U.N.'s Ban Ki Moon emerges as dogged reformer
In his 15 months as UN secretary-general, he has insisted that the UN come to embody two qualities not always associated with it: efficiency and responsiveness.
from the March 12, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 3
That determination to stay focused on key issues has not been lost on some outside observers who know the UN well and see Ban's style as something new.
"One thing that stands out is that he set his priorities pretty early on and has stuck with them," says Michael Doyle, a UN expert at Columbia University in New York and a former undersecretary-general at the UN. "He made Darfur, climate change, and UN reform his priorities, and he's stuck with them – something that doesn't always happen at the UN."
Ban deserves credit for advances on all three issues – despite the "painfully slow" movement on Darfur, Mr. Doyle says. He adds that while Ban may be able to make modest institutional improvements – like the reorganization and expansion of political affairs he's pursuing – any real progress on UN reform will take a "grand bargain" between developed and developing countries and won't be principally the work of the secretary-general.
People who have worked with Ban at the start of his five-year term (which can be renewed) say two motivations underlie his actions: his own experience as a diplomat and the trajectory in his lifetime of his native land.
Ban trusts that persistence – a quality that took him to the top of South Korea's diplomatic pyramid – will deliver dividends on tough global issues as well. As one who grew up within the security of a UN-backed armistice and rose in his profession as his country blossomed into a stable democracy and an economic power, Ban came to see South Korea's transformation as the ideal of the UN's purpose.
On climate change, Ban has kept at the issue and was able to overcome "a great deal of foot-dragging by the US," Doyle says, to get an agreement at the international conference in Bali last fall.
As a way of building up pressure for action at Bali, Ban held a summit just before the General Assembly in New York last September, drawing 80 heads of state – the largest number ever to attend a meeting on climate change. That set the stage for Ban's aggressive cajoling at the Bali conference in December, a role many experts say was pivotal in preventing a collapse of the international effort to reduce greenhouse gases. Now his sights are set on hammering out commitments to action at the conference in Copenhagen, Denmark set for next year.
"The climate-change issue has really brought out the nuts-and-bolts nature of this secretary-general," says Robert Orr, an assistant secretary-general for policy planning. "It's his signature the way he's been pushing at the strategic level with the leaders, but has also done very much in the boiler room here at the UN to ensure that the organization is up to the challenge of advancing and implementing these very complex negotiations."
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