In the interests of “transparency”, and UN “reform”, the new UNSG BAN KI-MOON has today authorized publication of his financial disclosure form on the UN website.
There are no figures given, no sums of money. [CORRECTION: Reuters has reported from UNHQ/NY that “New United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon and his wife have assets valued at $1.2 million to $2.5 million, he said on Friday in the first financial disclosure made public by a U.N. secretary-general. Ban also revealed he made less than $100,000 in salary as South Korea’s foreign minister last year. Ban became foreign minister in January 2004 but stepped down last November to begin the transition to his new job, which began on January 1. At the United Nations, Ban will earn $403,958 a year. He also will be able to live for free…Last April, the world body ordered its most senior staff to file disclosure forms after investigations of the oil-for-food program for Iraq and the procurement department turned up evidence of significant mismanagement and corruption. The rule did not apply to the post of secretary-general…The nine-page form showed Ban’s costliest assets, valued at between $500,001 and $1 million, are an apartment and a plot of residential land in Seoul. His wife, Yoo Soon-taek, owns a plot of non-residential land in Seoul. The couple’s other assets are in bank accounts. Ban checked the ‘no’ box to a question asking if he had ever been involved in an activity that could harm the image of the United Nations or compromise his objectivity or independence in his U.N. duties.” http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070126/wl_nm/un_ban_disclosure_dc
It was slightly embarassing — what does this really do for us?
The only real disclosure on the financial form is that SG BAN’s daughter (BAN Huan Hee) works in the UNICEF Office in Nairobi, Kenya — where SG BAN will be visiting during his nine-day “foreign” (see UNOG Friday press briefing, cited below) trip. BAN’s daughter’s husband, Suddarth Chatterjee, also apparently works in the UNICEF Office in Nairobi, Kenya.
A UN statement issued upon the publication of this statement says: “Certain personal details have been removed for security purposes”.
http://www.un.org/apps/sg/sgstats.asp?nid=2424
Thanks to The Beaver (see comments below), who found this amazing bit, from Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition)- Daily News in English About Korea: Korean Women Fly High in UN, by Kim Yoon-duk (sion@chosun.com),(2002.10.21):
“Five young Korean women in their 20s will go out into the world as junior professional officers of the United Nations this year, finalists that pushed aside 180 competitors. Starting next month, they will leave for Paris, Geneva, and Sri Lanka with officers from all over the world to learn the work of the UN on location and at its headquarters. ‘Belief in work’ is what brought these women to apply for the positions, as much work will take them to regions under dispute in African and Southeast Asia to labor under inferior conditions. Park Jae-hyun will be the first to leave the country with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). She applied not to the Geneva headquarters but a place called Jafna in North Sri Lanka. A graduate of English Language and Literature at Yonsei University and the Graduate School of International Studies, Park’s connection with refugees began early. She helped North Korean defectors at the boundary of China and North Korea and was at the site of a Kosovo refugee camp. ‘Meeting a refugee family from North Korea in 1999 was a turning point in my life. Refugees weren’t suffering in some far-away country. They were here with us,’ she said. ‘I was moved when I saw refugees from Kosovo helping others when it was even difficult to carry on their own lives.’ Huh Yoon-seon, who applied for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights used to be a reporter for an English newspaper, but last June, she quit her job and began preparing to be a UN official; she will go to Geneva in mid-November. Since her days as a politics and diplomacy major at Ewha Woman’s University, she burrowed stubbornly into human rights and applied to be in charge of this topic as a reporter.
Ban Hyun-hee will go to the UN headquarters in New York. Studying international trade at the Yonsei Graduate School of International Studies, she worked for six months as an intern at the UN Headquarters Economy and Society Department since last September, tending her dreams to be a specialist in international affairs. Youngest of the five, Lee So-hye, will go to the headquarters in France and Yoon Sun-hee will go to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, most likely to Africa. The junior professional officer system was first introduced to Korea in 1996. Every year, the Ministry of Foreign affairs and Trade recruits members (www.unrecruit.go.kr). As of this year, 29 were dispatched at various international organizations such as UNICEF, the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.” http://www.unhcr.or.kr/admin/Hicalsum/article_board/index.php?popup=&mode=content&num=78&readnum=318&op_admin=&std_id=
Siddharth Chatterjee is listed as the senior programme officer with UNICEF for Somalia, based in Nairobi and the daughter is listed as a JPO.
Good work! The UN’s anti-nepotism rules, if I am not mistaken, have been updated a couple of years ago concerning spouses, to accomodate two-career families, or couples. The rules do allow both spouses to work for the UN, but not in any situation when one would be in a position to supervise the other. A JPO (Junior Professional Officer) is usually someone seconded — and paid for — by a Member State, though the payment is processed through the UN Administration. Does this mean that JPOs are not, technically, UN staff? I’m not sure on this — maybe it’s more like being an intern — but salaried, with benefits, and probably with a different and better ground pass. In this case, would that mean that SG BAN’s daughter is working for UNICEF and being paid by South Korea? The UN anti-nepotism rules do not permit children of UN staff to also work at the UN (and the same goes for siblings), but if BAN’s daughter is JPO seconded and paid by South Korea, do the rules apply?
It was interesting to learn from the UN spokesman, during one of the last UNHQ/NY daily briefings of the Kofi Annan administration that, of course, as we all already knew, the SG was not a staff member. It was the first time I’d ever heard such a thing. So, if the SG is not staff member, then it’s OK if his daughter works for the UN (and if she’s a JPO she is technically not a staff member either) — but it’s still not OK if she’s supervised by her own husband.
By the way, it seems that SG BAN will be going to Nairobi and meeting UN staff there, after he attends the African Union summit meeting. I wonder if, in addition to seeing his daughter and her husband, SG BAN will also pop in on the revived SMCC (Staff-Management Coordination Council, I think), to meet with delegates who had a very stormy relationship with Kofi Annan’s Administration, and will have travelled to Nairobi from most major duty stations, to discuss matters related to the pending UN GA debate on the reform of the internal justice system?
May be he can get UNON HMRS director to expedite the recruitment process in different agencies that have to rely on HR for filling their vacancies, when he is down in NBO 🙁
Regarding UN anti-nepotism rules, this is an interesting tit-bit
http://www.unhcr.or.kr/admin/Hicalsum/article_board/index.php?popup=&mode=content&num=78&readnum=318&op_admin=&std_id=
“Ban Hyun-hee will go to the UN headquarters in New York. Studying international trade at the Yonsei Graduate School of International Studies, she worked for six months as an intern at the UN Headquarters Economy and Society Department since last September, tending her dreams to be a specialist in international affairs.” ( Nota: dated 2002.10.21)
Was not daddy the Chief of Staff of Han Seung-soo, the General Assembly president in 2001 while she was an intern? And according to this article she started as a JPO in UN/NY in 2002.
Amazing! So, SG BAN’s daughter was an intern (working without salary or international status) for six months at UNHQ/NY (starting during the high-point of the year in NY, the annual General Assembly – and right about the time of 9/11 – the attacks that felled the World Trade Center), in what is now the Department for Economic and Social Affairs (DESA). Then, she returned — with a salary paid by the South Korean government, while her father was an official in the South Korean government — as a Junior Professional Officer at UNHQ/, apparently, in late 2002. And so, now, in early 2007, BAN’s daughter is either still, or again, a Junior Professional Officer, working with UNICEF in Nairobi — and still, or again, with a salary paid by the South Korean Government, during a time when her father was the Foreign Minister and Trade Minister of South Korea, until he took office as Secretary-General of the United Nations on 1 January! Whew! Normally, Junior Professional Officers can expect their government-paid jobs to last one to two years, maximum. Something is going on here…
(As an aside, JPOs are not UN staff, and they are not on regular budgetary posts, so they must apply as external candidates if they are then interesed in joining the UN.)
Actually, Kurt Waldheim’s daughter had a nice cozy professional or higher level post in the Palais des Nations, the UN Office in Geneva, while he was UN Secretary-General — but those were different times…
I’m now going to look into your lead about BAN working with the UNGA in 2001, when his daughter was an intern …
Right you are, BEAVER — the UN’s official biography of SG BAN says — in power-resume style — that “In 2001-2002, as Chef-de-Cabinet during the ROK’s [Republic of Korea’s] Presidency of the General Assembly, he facilitated the prompt adoption of the first resolution of the session, condemning the terrorist attacks of 11 September, and undertook a number of initiatives aimed at strengthening the Assembly’s functioning, thereby helping to turn a session that started out in crisis and confusion into one in which a number of important reforms were adopted.” – http://www.un.org/sg/biography.shtml
So, he was chef de cabinet for the President of the UN General Assembly, while his daughter HYUN HEE worked as an intern in the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs at UNHQ/NY.
This daughter is apparently his youngest child, and was born in 1976.
There is another daughter, born in 1972, and a son born in 1974, according to this website: http://www.mondostars.com/politics/bankimoon.html
SG BAN’s youngest daughter, HYUN HEE, also won (co-won) first place in an essay competition on “Trade Remedies”. The competition was organized by the South Korean MInistry of Trade and Finance.
(Essay Title: Analysis on the WTO Disputes on Safeguards in light of Korea-China Garlic Disputes. It was co-authored with Hyeran Jo, who is now a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan.)
When the essay was written, BAN KI-MOON was with the Foreign Ministry; it’s not clear whether he was also, at the time, with the Trade Ministry, or when he would have started there.
At the time of the award, in November 2000, BAN KI-MOON was working with the President of the UN GA at UNHQ/NY, and BAN Hyun Hee was an intern at UNHQ/NY.
It seems that there may be different rules about nepotism in South Korea.
FWIW:
You forgot Kristina Mayo, who worked as her stepfather’s UN assistant for two years before she resigned April 21 2005. Step daddy is Maurice Strong (special UN adviser on North Korea )
Then there was Imran Riza , senior political adviser to Kofi Annan’s personal representative to southern Lebanon whilst daddy was CdC ( pre-circa 2005).
Another “all in the family ” conflict :one of the candidates for the last UNSG run has a son who works for the UNCHR as a Senior repatriation Officer in Myanmar/Burma ( BTW:Sivanka Dhanapala has been working at the UNHCR since 1995)
Secretary Ban ‘s daughter was listed as “APO to the UNICEF Representative in Khartoum” for Greater DARFUR in 2005 and currently it is mentioned that she is a field officer in NBO.
And the world keeps turning 🙂
Oh I forgot: US President George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna was working as an intern at the Unicef regional headquarters in Panama ( as late as last Fall)
I’m impressed…you really know this stuff. Iqbal Riza’s daughter – a “senior political adviser” to Stephan di Mistura, was it? And Dhanapala’s son works as a “senior repatriation officer” for UNHCR in Myanmar/Burma?
And BAN’s daughter was with UNICEF in Darfur — now, SG BAN says, it’s his No. 1 priority.
Also Saahir Lone, son of Salim Lone (who worked for many years for DPI until his retirement after the bombing of the UN HQ in Baghdad in August 2003) — Saahir was (and maybe still is) the personal assistant of the chef de cabinet of the Commissioner-General of UNRWA, and was hired by Salim’s friend and colleague Mian Qadruddin…
The daughter of the head of UNOG Medical Service is working for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights…
The son of a secretary for the confidential medical dossiers in the UNOG Medical Service is working as a UNOG Security Officer, and his fiance is working in the sensitive office of the UNOG legal adviser…
You’re right, I did forget about Kristina Mayo, but I am recalling that she resigned (or Maurice Strong let her go) after it became public knowledge that she was working for him…
It is Iqbal’s son. Kristina had to resign two days after her father was forced out and she was “discovered” ( I guess since she was his assistant and he was out, she has no one to work for). “Scratch my back I will scratch yours” goes the saying.
Thanks — I should have realized it was a son — if not from the name, certainly because women rarely get Senior Political Adviser posts…