The Role of UN Secretary General - Assignment Example

Has Ban Ki-moon demonstrated any success so far in developing the role of UN Secretary General? Ban Ki-moon has succeeded Kofi Annan as the current Secretary General of the United Nations. He took over from the latter in 2007 and has continued to work in his office ever since. He hails from South Korea, where he served as a career diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He also served as the foreign minister of Korea from 2004 to 2006. It was in 2006 that he was elected as the next (8th) Secretary General of the UN General Assembly. He passed a number of reforms when he came into power. He immediately took steps to reform the peacekeeping and UN employment regimes in place. He has had strong views on the issues regarding global warming, Darfur and so on and so forth (Banks 2008). Ban Ki-moon has played an active part at keeping away the political tensions which had erupted within Iran and North Korea, since both these countries have had nuclear aspirations for a long period of time. He has made his views apparent regarding the Middle East peace process, the environmental issues which have engulfed the world now and in the coming times, the rise of international terrorism, the proliferation of the weapons that could be remarked under the famous term of mass destruction realms, the ever-increasing epidemic of HIV and AIDS and many more. It is a fact that the Secretary General’s job is indeed the most impossible job on earth and there is quite a good amount of reasoning behind the very same. He has done all he could in a span of 2 and a half years to suggest that his active part in international politics and reconciliation amongst aggrieved parties is made crystal clear. His role has come about with the escalating tensions in the Middle East, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan by the US and its allied forces, the Darfur and the North Korean and Iranian nuclear tensions. He has showed to the world that he wants to act as a mediator no matter how difficult it is to have such a job done. His goodwill has remained there all this while as he has tried his best to remain unbiased and honest with his job of UN’s Secretary Genera of the General Assembly. He has been upbeat about the role that he has played in the international conflict amongst nations and his speeches have more or less demonstrated his will and determination to suggest to the world that he means business as far as his respective job is concerned. The role has become ever so important as people have criticized him on one pretext or the other, however the bottom line remains that Ban Ki-moon has showed commitment all the way through in his job and as the Secretary General of the General Assembly of the most potent world body that there is, at present. One could suggest that there have been shortcomings every now and then within his working regimes but then again he is a human and he is bound to commit mistakes which make him only human at the end of the day. Ban Ki-moon’s role at refusing to condemn the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s death penalty was seen in a mixed context. Some suggested that he was living up to the expectations that America and its allied forces have put in him while others said a totally different thing. What he himself opined was based on the logic that each and every nation of the world has a right to put to death its own people and not just the President. However there was severe criticism of his statement since the UN did not accept the death penalty at all and instead took the same from a human rights perspective. The contradiction was very valid if seen within the related scheme of things and suggested that Ban Ki-moon had indeed transcended his official position to refuse the condemnation of the death penalty imposed over the late Iraqi President. However his stance changed dramatically in the days ahead as he told an audience in the earlier parts of 2007 that he recognized and indeed supported the trend within the international society domains which would eventually phase out the doctrine and the practice of putting people under the heinous act of death penalty. Some people suggested that Ban Ki-moon had understood where he had gone wrong earlier and thus was making amends then to prove that he was the most apt person for the coveted job within the United Nations. As far as his earliest reforms in the job are concerned, Ban Ki-moon proposed a couple of major restructuring projects which were aimed at, 1: to split the peacekeeping operations which were run under the aegis of the United Nations into two separate departments and, 2: to mix the political affairs and the disarmament departments with one another (Ki-moon 2006). He met severe resistance from inside the UN General Assembly as the members did not quite appreciate the reforms that he was trying to incorporate. The developing world was much grumbled at the combining of the political affairs and the disarmament departments, as these countries thought that Ban Ki-moon would appoint the American Pascoe as in charge of the new office. The United States backed his proposals in an outright manner from the beginning. As Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon’s role has been of essence. This is because he has understood how his predecessor Kofi Annan was unable to do something worthwhile for the sake of the peace accords around the world. He has shown interest in the fact that he wants to change this perception worldwide that UN is of no good use. He has explicitly stated that he wants to turn the attention of the people towards the right targets and not just focus on mere talking. However this is also a given that he has, to date, only spoken of such steps that he has planned in mind and not actually done something out of his realms which would trigger a peaceful conclusion to a long standing problem. The examples are many and pretty varied around the world. The need is to focus on the underlying issues which have engulfed the world for all the wrong reasons. For instance, the perspective of Ban Ki-moon on the Gaza issue is of no use, just because there has been no attention paid on this matter that could be remarked as significant. This is a very distressing situation for the world to understand and pay heed to. Just being the Secretary General of the world’s most potent body is of no use if the man in charge just spends his due time in office and does not contribute to the overall well-being and goodness of the 7 billion people present on the face of the earth (Kille 2007). He is indeed answerable to the people who got him elected in the first place and more than anything else, he is held accountable to the peoples of the world’s different nations, because he is their Secretary General as the United Nations encompasses nearly 200 countries of the world. Ban Ki-moon has a real tough task at hand and he must understand that he cannot let go on his priorities at all. He needs to pay heed where it is most significantly required. He just cannot allow the peace initiatives to die down on one context or the other. He must make visits to the war-trodden areas and instruct orders which are in line with the world peace moves and the United Nations’ conventions and charter. Much needs to be done by this South Korean diplomat in the UN office otherwise he will also be a part of the historic times, bringing a bad name to the United Nations and doing little towards the cause of the global body. In the end, it would be proper to state here that Ban Ki-moon is on the right track as far as his vision and principles are concerned, however he needs to do more in order to see a practical shape of what will indeed happen on the face of this world. He must get his act together and constitute a team which is filled with professionals, who know how to meet their tasks in a very effective and efficient way (Author Unknown 2006). Ban Ki-moon still has a long way to go. He must understand the world’s priorities with regards to his job and then act full throttle at achieving what he has set for his own self as well as the world’s most potent body. The General Assembly needs to change its image as well. People perceive it as one of the units of the UN which gets the speeches done by the heads of the state in a very amiable way. This has to change for the betterment of not only the United Nations but also the peoples of the different nations of the world. Bibliography Author Unknown. (2006). Promises Should Be Made for the Keeping: Excerpt from Mr. Ban Ki-Moons Address on His Appointment as Secretary-General of the United Nations, on 13 October 2006. UN Chronicle, Vol. 43, December Banks, Rosemary. (2008). The United Nations at Sixty-Two: Rosemary Banks Questions Whether the United Nations Is Still Relevant or Becoming Redundant. New Zealand International Review, Vol. 33 Kille, Kent J. (2007). The UN Secretary-General and Moral Authority: Ethics and Religion in International Leadership. Georgetown University Press Ki-Moon, Ban. (2006). For Permanent Peace: Beyond the Nuclear Challenge and the Cold War. Harvard International Review, Vol. 28 Word Count: 1,518 Read More