UNITED NATIONS - / www.MaximsNews.com@ U.N./ - 05 February 2007 -- The inaugural year for the new UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-Moon, will be a hazardous and trying one. 

The world in 2007 has entered a dangerous phase in which genocide, nuclear weaponry, terrorism and geopolitics, have risen to be the primary challenges that face the freshly elected UN leader. 

The test of Mr. Ban’s leadership is likely to be how effectively he can manage, ameliorate or defuse these lethal menaces before they pose a direct threat to humankind.

The most important cluster of issues that Mr. Ban will encounter from the outset relate to the main business of the UN: maintaining peace around the world. It is in this realm of security that Mr. Ban will have to show his real talent as the globe’s pre-eminent diplomat. 

He will have to provide evidence of a determined and focused approach as peacemaker and catalyst for change – especially because, in this arena, he will be taking on a number of new and unresolved political obligations which came into play under his predecessor, Kofi Annan. 

For example, in 2005, the UN agreed to make “the responsibility to protect” a principle which the Security Council now considers in weighing whether to support humanitarian intervention abroad. 

This rule allows the UN – when a state gravely misbehaves – to override the Charter provision that protects the domestic sovereignty of a member-nation against outside interference. 

The likely reckoning for this measure could come for the first time on the question of stopping the genocide in Darfur , as the Sudanese government has so far refused entry to UN forces. 

Will the UN be willing to send troops into Sudan against the wishes of the government in Khartoum by invoking this principle

The second set of challenges deal with the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the globe. The most immediate crisis-points here relate to North Korea and Iran. 

Ban Ki-Moon will, of course, have a special role in handling the matter of the Korean bomb as he is Korean and as he has had past dealings with Pyongyang as South Korea’s Foreign Minister. 

But, the UN will, in addition, be intimately involved in overseeing the Iranian nuclear dispute through its crucial oversight agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and through the likely imposition of sanctions on Tehran by the Security Council. 

Facing these two highly volatile situations, Mr. Ban will also be under intense pressure to accelerate the UN’s efforts to reduce nuclear – as well as biological and chemical – weaponry around the planet.

Terrorism is the third benchmark.  Here Mr. Ban will have to focus on assisting so-called failed states to reconstruct their societies and help them in quashing domestic fanaticism.  Kofi Annan has bequeathed Ban two formidable UN ventures – the Peacebuilding Commission and the Democracy Fund – to aid ailing nations in the rebuilding process. 

Ban must now make sure these two entities operate as promised. He also must forcefully pursue Annan’s Millennium Development goals, convince member-states to continue to finance the body’s 19 ongoing peacekeeping missions, and among other serious tasks, place a moratorium on small arms traffic that fuels insurgencies. 

All of these actions can go far toward dampening down the scourge of extremist violence.

Ban’s last charge is to act as a conciliator-in-chief in ongoing conflicts around the globe. He will certainly need to press forward toward resolving the long-running Israeli-Palestinian dispute. 

He will have to look into the fate of aging dictatorships -- as in Burma , Cuba , remnants of the old Soviet empire and in Africa – to encourage their transition to democracy. To assure more legitimacy for the actions of the UN Security Council, he may have to consider ways of expanding its membership. 

As a supporter of the International Criminal Court, he has to assure the world that the institution will try war criminals around the globe. He must also ramp up the UN’s Human Rights Council that, so far, has failed to live up to its admonitory role. 

And to improve the UN secretariat, he will have to seek broad reforms in the UN’s management. Most importantly, he must nurture good relations with the world’s most powerful country and the UN’s biggest donor – the United States.

To accomplish all of these objectives, Ban must show that he can be an effective and persuasive global spokesman. Among the greatest strengths of his predecessor, Mr. Annan, was his ability to inspire the billions of people on the earth with the UN’s mission of eliminating poverty, securing human rights, controlling violence and upholding moral goals. 

Using the UN podium, Ban Ki-Moon can now enlist these same concerns and make them his own. Willingly or not, he is today the world’s secular pope. With the full support of the UN – so far, a survivor of 61 years of strife and upheaval – he will have an ostensible head-start.

Labels: United Nations, U.N., 

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