Ban Ki-moon leaves UN with complicated legacy

World Today

Ban Ki-moon leaves UN with complicated legacy

As the race to select the new UN Secretary General heats up, Ban Ki-moon is wrapping up his last few months as the U.N. chief. Ban will step down at the end of the year, completing a decade as the world body’s moral authority.

CCTV’s Liling Tan reports.
Follow Liling Tan on Twitter @LilingTan

For South Korean statesman and diplomat Ban Ki-moon, his decade as U.N. chief has been marked by both hits and misses.

Ban’s first years here were marked by the global financial crisis soon followed by the Haiti earthquake, the Arab Spring, Ebola in West Africa, conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Libya, South Sudan the Ukraine crisis, and the rise of modern terrorism.

But experts said Ban’s legacy will be blemished most by the UN’s failure to resolve the Syrian crisis, despite his best efforts.

Critics also fault Ban for being too slow to acknowledge the U.N.’s role in the Haiti cholera epidemic, and for a rash of U.N. peacekeeping sex scandals that saw a U.N. whistle-blower suspended then exonerated, and the head of mission in the Central African Republic fired in a move also criticized as too little too late.

Still, experts agreed that Ban can be credited for charting new ground for the rights of women and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, and especially for pushing through a landmark global climate change pact and finalizing the 15 year Sustainable Development agenda.