The InterDependent

The General Assembly formally elected Ban Ki-moon to a second five-year term as Untied Nations Secretary General on June 21, only four days after the Security Council backed him for the position in a unanimous resolution. His first term ends on Dec. 31.

Ban, a former South Korean foreign minister little known outside Asia when he was elected to his first term, got off to a slow start in the eyes of some diplomats in New York, but over the last year or two has grown in stature through his strong leadership in complicated crises.

He was unflinching in demanding over several months of an intense and violent stand-off in Côte d’Ivoire that the elected president, Alassane Ouattara, be allowed to take office and that Laurent Gbagbo, his predecessor, be forced to step down and abide by the result of the vote. Under Ban’s leadership, the UN took a forceful stand in April behind Ouattara, who is now in office.

This year, Ban also supported Arab pro-democracy protests that have led to political changes in the region. Earlier, he stood firm against the efforts of the government of Sri Lanka to block investigations into possible war crimes by the Sri Lankan Army during its successful campaign two years against the remnants of a long-running Tamil rebellion in the north of the country.

There was one disappointment for Ban, who began his first term in office pledging to introduce real progress on international agreements regarding the environment and climate change. He was let down by member nations in the global North and South, which could not find common ground on the issue of universality, with developing nations demanding to be excluded from binding agreements, and richer nations, particularly the United States, arguing that all countries had to be bound by treaties.

Milan Stanic for UNA-USA

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, has been endorsed unanimously by the Security Council for re-election to a second five-year term. He faces a vote in the General Assembly on June 21. Some developing nations view Ban, a Korean, as too close to the U.S.

Ban now has another five years to pursue his climate change agenda. In the meantime, China, which wanted to be excluded from binding targets, has become the world’s largest carbon emitter.

In some developing nations, Ban has always been viewed as too close to the U.S. In the Security Council deliberations on his second term, the Latin American and Caribbean group, which could not block his election, nonetheless held up council endorsement, causing a delay. The Reuters news agency reported that some diplomats said that the resistance came from Cuba and other Latin American governments -- Guatemala, Mexico and Paraguay.

One of the most difficult challenges Ban faces comes, ironically, from Asia, where there is disarray in a UN-backed tribunal set up in 2003 to try former leaders of the Khmer Rouge, whose time in power in the mid-1970s left up to two million Cambodians dead in executions, forced labor, starvation and disease. Against the instincts of UN negotiators, the agreement allowed the Cambodian government of Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former Khmer Rouge official himself, an unusual (for UN tribunals) influence over the court. This has put the process in jeopardy.

The recent resignations of four tribunal staff members and Stephen Heder, a leading international expert on the Khmer Rouge who was serving as a consultant, were accompanied by accusations that Ban and his under secretary-general for political affairs, B. Lynn Pascoe, an American, had acquiesced in Hun Sen’s demand that the tribunal’s prosecutors stop adding potential defendants to the list of people to be investigated.

Ban denied the accusation, which was made anonymously without with supporting evidence. But what to do about this troubling tribunal – and the fate of the UN’s human rights office in Cambodia -- will continue to be issues. Ban also faces the challenge of a faltering political situation in Burma (also known as Myanmar) and potential political unrest in Thailand, both countries he knows well and where his personal intercession could be important.

In 2008, Ban essentially ordered the reclusive Burmese military government to allow international assistance for the victims of cyclone Nargis, which displaced more than two million people. The military was accused of policies verging on crimes against humanity when it barred outsiders from bringing aid into the country, leaving cyclone victims to fend for themselves without food or shelter.