Ban Ki-moon’s Travels: Escape Hatch or Act of Diplomacy?

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by Helmut Volger • July 1, 2015

image from article, with caption: Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, visited Nurek, the largest dam and a hydroelectric plant in Tajikistan, in June 2015.

Extract from article:

BERLIN — If you take a close look at the public schedule of United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, it becomes evident that he travels a lot to member states, even more than his charismatic and most active predecessor Kofi Annan. Why does Ban travel so often? ...

The uncharismatic secretaries-general must find their specific ways to cope with any lack of public support and praise; one way that Ban attempts to gain popularity is investing energy in political travels to UN member countries. ...

Are Ban’s travels, as his critics argue, an escape from his work in New York, where he is confronted with unending criticism and unfavorable headlines in the news? Of course, Ban may feel more at ease while traveling, but such pauses from the “home problems” in New York were also welcome to Boutros-Ghali after he came under increasing criticism from US diplomats, US Congress and the media. Annan, too, met severe criticism; in his case it happened in 2003, after he called the US-British led intervention in Iraq “illegal” in public statements.

Regarding the agenda of Ban’s travels, he meets a great range of groups, and is thus practicing a strategy of “public diplomacy,” managing international relations “through public communications media and through dealings with the wide range of non-governmental entities (political parties, corporations, trade associations, labour unions, educational institutions . . . and so on),” as Alan K. Henrikson, a scholar at Tufts University, defined it.

To appeal directly to social groups and media in member countries makes sense as the UN searches for support and solutions to urgent global problems such as climate change. Ban’s talking campaigns — on the spot — are clearly not spectacular, as everyone knows who has heard him speak. Yet in the long run, his traveling might be increasing support for the UN in its 193 member countries.

His next trip? To Norway to check on the glaciers.