12-26-2007 16:14
 http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opi…

First Year as UN Chief

By Ban Ki-moon
U.N. Secretary-General

I have not sat still this year. From the very first day that I took office, I have been on the go-engaging leaders in their capitals and across the UN community to push progress on four main fronts:

U.N. Reform

We need to change the U.N. culture and re-engineer the United Nations for life in our fast-paced modern world. We need to move faster and more effectively in responding to global challenges, within all three pillars of the U.N.’s work: peace and security, economic and social development, human rights. As one U.N. team, we need to be more mobile and more flexible. And we must meet the highest standards of ethics, transparency and accountability.

To better deliver on the world’s expectations and growing demands upon us, I have set out to re-organize key departments. We began with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, improving performance and efficiency by splitting it into separate operational and logistical departments. Now we will turn our attention to the Department of Political Affairs to become more proactive in tackling global crises, especially in the realm of preventive diplomacy.

I have placed special emphasis on ethics and set the highest standards of disclosure and transparency. We have new standardized ethics policies governing the Secretariat as well as the Funds and Programs. The Procurement Task Force continues its critical work. We will seek over the coming year to put it on permanent footing, with full investigative independence.

Climate Change

I have made the fight against global warming my top priority, focusing world attention on this defining issue of our era. More than 80 heads of state came to the U.N.’s High Level Meeting on Climate Change in New York. I have traveled to Antarctica, the Amazon, the Andes, Lake Chad and the Great Man-made River in Libya in an effort to dramatize the scale of the problem. I launched the latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which garnered another Nobel Peace Prize for the U.N. I worked to galvanize global public opinion and political will in advance of the all-important climate change conference in Bali, where world leaders took a vital first step toward reaching a comprehensive climate change accord by 2009. This is the year’s key achievement.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDG)/Human Rights. We are at the mid-point of a great campaign to end global poverty. I have focused attention on the progress we have made-and highlighted the areas where we must do better. I established the MDG Africa Steering Group to address the special problems of Africa, home to the “bottom billion” of the world’s poor who have largely been left behind by rising global economic growth. During the coming year, I shall devote great effort to strengthening the U.N.’s role in development. For the poorest of the world’s poor, economic and social advancement should be considered an innate human right. I have appointed a full-time Special Adviser for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities and launched a global awareness campaign for the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Geopolitics and Security

I have visited half a dozen of our peacekeeping missions, from MONUC in Congo-DRC to MINUSTAH in Haiti. The Special Tribunal in Lebanon is on track and we are helping the country’s leaders resolve their constitutional crisis. The U.N. has expanded its role in Iraq and responded effectively to humanitarian disasters in Bangladesh, Congo, Sudan and the Occupied Palestinian territories.

In the Middle East, I worked behind-the-scenes to help launch the recent Annapolis peace talks, particularly in convincing regional leaders to attend. I will continue these efforts within the Quartet.

No geopolitical issue has absorbed more of my time than Darfur. A year ago, there was no movement toward peace in Darfur. Today, peace talks are underway in Sirte and a joint AU-U.N. peacekeeping force is about to deploy. The challenge for the coming year is to work continuously with the Sudan government, rebel movements, representatives of civil society and regional leaders, as well as the U.N. Security Council and the international community, to ensure the ultimate success of both the talks and the military mission.

By the Numbers

I Flew 125,000 miles during 57 official visits (to more than 120 separate cities and sites) in 39 countries or territories on 6 continents. I had more than 300 bilateral meetings with government officials. (130+ during the General Assembly.) I spent a total of 132 days on the road.

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It says that his bigest achiement was  on Climate Change at Bali and to get there “I have traveled to Antarctica, the Amazon, the Andes, Lake Chad and the Great Man-made River in Libya, in an effort to dramatize the scale of the problem.” He does not recognize that in effect it was the amount of CO2 that he emmitted in his trips were the longest lasting result, and that Australia and Papua New Guinea were indeed to be complimented as having brought about the results at Bali.

Reorganizing the furniture on a huge glass-Titanic will require billions, but will it improve the operation of this mamoth world enterprise? What did the UN do to stop Africa from Shooting its leaden feet? Is the moribund Commission on Sustainable Development on Mr. Ban’s radar screen? Does he think that MDGs are anythink but fiction if the CSD is inoperative? Has he invited Zimbabwe to look into its leader’s face - or even better - did he go have a look at that starving hyper-hyper inflation country, and ask its neighboring Malawy for a view of its phylosoper’s stone on how to do things better?
Can he try to create a Levitown heaven for failed despots - to simply send them there for safekeeping, and have the world body reshape their fallen empires? Really? What has he actually done in his first year? How has he helped a merchantilistic Korea, his home-country, by not looking into the development of a consumer market in that large one billion poor people’s Africa? Has he looked at what China does there? Was that good for Korea?