NATIONAL PRESS CLUB DINNER WITH U. N. SECRETARY GENERAL BAN KI-MOON SUBJECT: THE WORLD HOT SPOTS AND CLIMATE CHANGE MODERATOR: JOHN HUGHES, PRESIDENT OF THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB LOCATION: THE NPC BALLROOM, WASHINGTON, D.C. TIME: 7:00 P.M. EDT DATE: THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2015 (C) COPYRIGHT 2008, NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, 529 14TH STREET, WASHINGTON, DC - 20045, USA. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. ANY REPRODUCTION, REDISTRIBUTION OR RETRANSMISSION IS EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION, REDISTRIBUTION OR RETRANSMISSION CONSTITUTES A MISAPPROPRIATION UNDER APPLICABLE UNFAIR COMPETITION LAW, AND THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB RESERVES THE RIGHT TO PURSUE ALL REMEDIES AVAILABLE TO IT IN RESPECT TO SUCH MISAPPROPRIATION. FOR INFORMATION ON BECOMING A MEMBER OF THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, PLEASE CALL 202-662-7505. JOHN HUGHES: (Sounds gavel.) Good afternoon and welcome. My name is John Hughes. I'm an editor for Bloomberg First Word, which is our breaking news desk here in Washington, and I am the President of the National Press Club. We are the world’s leading professional organization for journalists. We are committed to our profession’s future through programs just like this, and we fight for a free press worldwide. For more information, visit our website Press.org. To donate to programs offered through our Club’s Journalism Institute, visit Press.org/institute. On behalf of our members worldwide, I want to welcome you all here in our live audience to today’s newsmaker dinner. I'd also like to welcome our C-SPAN and Public Radio audiences. You can follow the action on Twitter by using the hashtag NPCDinner. Remember, the public attends our dinners. Applause is not evidence of a lack of journalistic objectivity. After our guest’s speech, we’ll have a question and answer period. I will ask as many questions as time permits. Our head table includes guests of our speaker and also working journalists who are Club members. Let me introduce them to you now. I'd ask each person to stand briefly as names are announced. From the audience’s right, Bahaa El-Taweel, Washington correspondent for Egypt’s On TV network; Kathy Bonk, Executive Director of Communications Consortium Media Center, and a member of the NPC Journalism Institute board; Rachel Oswald, foreign affairs writer for CQ Roll Call and Vice Chair of the NPC Press Freedom committee; Wu Hangbo, U. N. Undersecretary General for Economic and Social Affairs, and a guest of our speaker; Jeff Ballou, news editor for Al Jazeera Media Network, and Vice Chairman of the NPC Board of Governors; Donna 1 Leinwand-Leger, breaking news reporter for USA Today, Vice Chair of the Speakers Committee and a former NPC president. Skipping over our speaker for a moment, Kasia Klimasinska, Treasury reporter for Bloomberg News and the Speakers Committee member who organized today’s dinner. Thank you, Kasia. Hervé Ladsous, U. N. Undersecretary General for Peacekeeping Operations, and a guest of the speaker; Hideomi Kinoshita, Washington bureau chief for Kyodo News; Dina Fine Maron, associate editor and journalist for Scientific American; Marc Wojno, senior associate editor at Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, and Treasurer of the National Press Club. (Applause) The United Nations celebrates its 70th birthday later this year. That's seven decades of international peacekeeping, humanitarian aid, assistance with economic development, and support of human rights. While particular of the U. N. agenda change from time to time, the underlying goal has remained constant: to prevent another conflict like World War II. Ban Ki-moon, the former Foreign Minister of South Korea, is serving his second term as U. N. Secretary General. He has been on the job since 2007, and he is the eighth person to hold this post. During Ban’s tenure, the U. N. has responded to crises in Darfur, the proliferation of weapons of mass destructions, the effects of global warming, and terrorism. Ban also faces challenges such as water shortages worldwide, the ebola outbreak in western Africa, and civil conflict in Ukraine and Syria. Despite these immediate challenges, he has focused on long-term goals as well, such as ending violence against women and improving education for the largest generation of young people the world has ever known. One of Ban’s predecessors said the position of Secretary General is “the most impossible job on Earth.” We look forward to hearing the secret of how to handle a job such as this. Please join me in giving a warm National Press Club welcome to United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon. (Applause) SECRETARY GENERAL BAN KI-MOON: Thank you for your very kind introduction, Mr. John Hughes, President of the National Press Club. Distinguished members of the NPC, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a great honor and pleasure to meet with you and thank you for your kind invitation and thank you for your taking time today. I know that you are eager to have tonight’s main course, I know that you have finished your main course, but you must be more interested in main course, there's a question and answer session. I look forward to that. But before that, I'd like to say a few words as some food for thought. Recently, I asked one of our very senior advisors who has been working longer than definitely 40 years, long serving advisors. I asked him, because I have been so much troubled by all what is happening in the world, “Have you ever seen during your 40 year-plus life with the United Nations such a time when we are having so many fires are taking place all around the world at once at a time like this way? I can name a list of ten hot spots 2 immediately in addition to continuing economic difficulties around the world.” He said he has never experienced such time. It is mostly one or two crises happening here and there. But now we have a list of ten headline news, headline crises. In addition to this, headline crisis you follow on a daily basis, we have many forgotten crises or frozen crises. I would not name which are the forgotten or frozen cases, you will know better than I do because you have been following all the times. We face really many crises at once. There are minimum 50 million refugees around the world. That's our job, to provide daily food, sanitation, water, education. That’s a huge, huge burden. For many people who are sick, many people who are out of school, many children, United Nations responsibility is getting more and more comfort and comfort. The United Nations has appealed $16 billion to cover humanitarian relief for this year, almost five times what we needed a decade ago. That's a huge increase, exponential increase. Billions of people face hatred and prosecution. Billions suffer from hunger and exploitation. And billions of dollars continue to be squandered on nuclear weapons and other arsenals. Beyond these numbers, we see several transformative trends. First, new economic powers have emerged. Second, more people are migrating than ever before seeking better opportunities. Now more people live in mega cities, people are coming to the cities making lot of problems for good governance, extremism and terrorism, and crimes have taken on more violent forms. Extreme weather patterns are hitting our world, and destroying and killing many people and infrastructures. States alone cannot solve these problems. Not a single country, however powerful or resourceful one may be. For example, we are living in the United States. People often immediately think that United States is the most powerful, most resourceful country. U.S. cannot do it alone. They look to the United Nations, the United Nations cannot handle this alone. We need collective power, solidarity. Otherwise, our world will get more and more troubles. Ladies and gentlemen, billions of people continue to suffer from the devastating consequences of governance failures, injustice, inequality, violations of human rights, and unbearable poverty. Now let me just mention several cases. But what I'm going to say is not all, but they are some of the very serious situations. Let us think about Syria. This is the fifth year where Syrian people have been abandoned, killed and displaced and refugent (sic). Meanwhile, the parties continue to show little or almost no willingness to solve this through dialogue. This is why I have asked my special envoy, Staffan de Mistura, to do maximum efforts to relaunch a political dialogue as a way to implement Geneva communiqué. If anyone is truly serious about engaging in meaningful negotiations to end this nightmare, he has to work on this matter. I would like to make a special plea on behalf of Palestinians in the Yarmouk refugee camps in Damascus. They are caught between the military motion of the Syrian government and the brutality of extremist groups Daesh and ISA. They have little way 3 out and the aid can find little way in. And their suffering is largely out of the spotlight. I have been working very hard recently to protect all these 18,000 people who have been trapped in between government forces and Daesh terrorists. There are a list of 3,500 children who need our immediate protection. Yemen is also in flames. Ladies and gentlemen, we have Valerie Amos who is now taking care of all humanitarian work, so welcome. Even before the latest escalations, two out of three Yemenis relied on humanitarian assistance. Levels of food and security were higher than in the poorest stretches of Africa. The recent fighting has only multiplied the sufferings and the security. Hundreds are dead.