As South Korea's Ban Ki-moon was ushered in as the United Nation's (U.N.) new chief last week, questions remain as to whether the world body will live up to its fundamental goals of ensuring peace, protecting human rights, and promoting development.
Ban joins the U.N. at a tough time, when the global watchdog has suffered crisis after crisis. Even outgoing Secretary-General Kofi Annan has described the current atmosphere as "very very tense".
This tension is the legacy of Annan's decade of leadership, which some observers have called "a monumental failure."
"From the disaster of the U.N. peacekeeping missions in Rwanda and Bosnia in the mid-1990s to the U.N.'s slow response to the Sudan genocide, its recent track record has been spectacularly unimpressive," wrote Professor Nile from The Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank, last week. "[Annan's] successor will inherit a U.N. whose image has slipped to an all-time low."
Besides the above failures, the U.N. has been embroiled in an internal corruption scandal, involving the oil-for-food programme in Iraq. U.N. troops have also been implicated in wide-spread abuses, including rape and assaults while on peacekeeping missions in the Congo. And both the Human Rights Commission and new Human Rights Council have been unable to pressure China to improve human rights ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games.
Ban's Promise to Act
Indeed, Ban's mission may seem impossible, but his tough stance and determination to revive the world body offer some hope.
Despite his joking mannerisms, the 62-year-old career diplomat wasted little words when laying out his agenda at a press conference after his swearing-in ceremony on Dec. 15. He called himself a "straight shooter" and reaffirmed his plans to see "concerted action" to achieve U.N. development goals. These include cutting extreme poverty by half and achieving universal education by 2015.
"You could say that I'm a man on a mission, and my mission could be dubbed Operation Restore Trust—trust in the organisation and trust between member states and the Secretariat," he said at the press conference, according to the Associated Press. "I hope this mission is not mission impossible."
The charismatic 62-year old went on to assure that he planned to become "directly engaged" in efforts to end the violence in Sudan's Darfur region.
"The suffering of the people of Darfur is simply unacceptable, and despite intensive efforts, the security situation appears to be deteriorating over recent days," he was quoted by United Press International as saying.
The U.N. is still tainted by its delayed response to the 1994 Rwanda genocide, which led to the deaths of over 800,000 minority Tutsis within a span of just 100 days.
Ban's sharp comments also left a scathing mark on Iran's anti-Israel policies and nuclear ambitions. He said Teheran's calls for Israel's destruction and its denial of the Nazi Holocaust were "unacceptable."
With the determination to "inject new confidence" into the stale leadership style at the U.N., Ban has pledged to replace the "passive and fearful" approach with a "dynamic and bold" one.
"By strengthening the three pillars of our United Nations—security, development and human rights—we can build a more peaceful, more prosperous and more just world for succeeding generations," he said. "[Then] we can live up to the hopes that so many people around the world place in this institution."
However, with its past legacy of broken promises, the U.N.'s new era under Ban will require more than just words. The upcoming African Union Summit in January and the Six-Party talks with North Korea over its nuclear future may just be the litmus tests, which will determine Ban's ability to turn the U.N.'s track record around—or not?
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