While serving in the UN from January 2007, Secretary General Ban has aggressively worked for the three goals of the UN, which encompass international peace and security, sustainable development and human rights improvement. These efforts have been made particularly at a time when the UN was faced with unprecedented challenges and crises in many fields such as international politics, economic and social globalization, and environmental challenges. In the process, Mr. Ban has been highly recognized from the international community for his outstanding leadership and achievements.
In the midst of the Arab Spring sparked by the Jasmine Revolution in 2011, Secretary General Ban actively fulfilled the UN's 'Responsibility to Protect' to prevent anti-humanitarian crimes including genocide. Through this effort, Secretary-General Ban could save the lives of many in the Middle East, while protecting human rights. Thus, he was praised as having made normative the Responsibility to Protect of the UN.
Under the principles of preventive diplomacy and support for forging world peace, Mr. Ban has made efforts to resolve conflicts and disputes by seeking the root causes of such issues. Through these efforts, he has made critically important contributions to democratizing Egypt and Libya, ending the civil wars of C＾ote d’Ivoire and Yemen, and assisting in South Sudan s independence efforts.
In such efforts, Secretary General Ban demonstrated a combination of cool headedness and a warm heart during his leadership efforts around the world on behalf of the UN. In such global efforts, he successfully mediated a plethora of complex issues involving various nations and regions, achieving great progress in promoting the harmony of humankind around the world in the spirit of peace and harmony.
In addition, Secretary General Ban has consistently called on the international community to implement the UN Millennium Development Goals in order to reduce poverty and reform the economies and societies of developing nations, while successfully securing an assistance fund amounting to 60 billion U.S. dollars.
In particular, Secretary General Ban has advocated a global strategy to promote the health care of women and children and endeavored to increase aid for African nations where many people are still suffering from poverty. Through these examples, one could easily bear witness to the fact that Secretary General Ban has always put actions before slogans.
Secretary General Ban has also made great progress in reforming one of the biggest and most complicated organizations in the world?the United Nations, which represents the voice of the international community. He has continuously led unprecedented efforts to reform the UN so that it may be reborn as a more transparent, efficient and results-oriented organization.
Despite some opposition, in the spirit of greater transparency and fairness, Secretary General Ban introduced a system to disclose the assets of senior officials in the UN and established an ethics office to further enhance the moral standards of the UN. Under the motto of "Do more with less," he has persistently made efforts to cut budgets and boost managerial efficiency within the UN.
Secretary General Ban has thus shown his steadfast abilities in resolving complicated and difficult tasks using his soft charisma and communicationbased leadership.
Moreover, Secretary General Ban is the first Korean national to become the top executive of the UN and he was reelected for a second term. This achievement has helped to upgrade the national pride of the Republic of Korea and the whole world has begun to recognize South Korea as a home of many important world leaders.
