UN's Ban To Address Migration Forum

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is scheduled to address some 800 government delegates from 163 UN member-states at Wednesday's opening session of the Second Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD).

Ban, who is from South Korea, is the second Asian UN secretary general to visit the country after U Thant of Burma, who was here in 1971 when he was conferred an honorary degree by the University of the Philippines.

UP will also confer Ban an honorary doctorate degree.

His visit to the Philippines, which is part of his four-country tour in the region this month, comes almost 30 years after the last visit of a UN secretary general; Kurt Waldheim was here in 1979 for UNCTAD V, or the Fifth UN Conference on Trade and Development.

After his opening address and press conference, Ban will be conferred the Order of Diplomatic Merit during his meeting with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at Malacañang Palace.

Ban's wife, Ban Soon-taek, on the other hand, is scheduled to visit on Wednesday the Aurora Quezon Elementary School in San Andres, Manila to observe a World Food Programme (WFP) project, the Food for Schools component of the Accelerated Hunger Mitigation Programme, which it implements with the Department of Education.

"The visit aims to highlight the support that the UN System in the Philippines has provided for the Philippines government to help attain the Millennium Development Goals," said the UN office based in Manila in a press statement on Madam Ban's schedule.

WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency. Last year, it gave food to 88 million people of mostly women and children in 78 of the world's poorest countries. This year, it spearheaded giving out rice to the estimated 500,000 Mindanaoans who were displaced by renewed fighting between government forces and Moro rebels.

After Manila, Ban will travel to India, where he is slated to hold talks with President Pratibha Patil, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and other senior officials. He is also scheduled to give a lecture at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation and meet with Indian business leaders on climate change.

Nepal, which abolished its 240-year-old monarchy in May, will be the third country on the UN chief's itinerary. He is expected to meet with President Ram Baran Yadav, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, other officials and members of the Constituent Assembly. He will also visit Lumbini, Buddha's birthplace.

Ban will then wrap up his Asian tour in Bangladesh, where he is expected to have meetings with President Iajuddin Ahmed and other top officials and to visit micro-finance, disaster reduction, and climate adaptation sites.

The eighth UN secretary general brings to his post 37 years of service in government and on the global stage. At the time of his election as secretary general, he was South Korea's minister of foreign affairs and trade.

Ban has long-standing ties with the UN, dating back to 1975 when he worked for his country's UN Division. He was eventually assigned to South Korea's Permanent Mission to the UN in New York.

According to the UN statement, Ban's advocacies include peace and security, climate change, human rights, nuclear disarmament, UN reforms, and development issues like migration.