Ban Ki-moon’s tenure at the helm of the United Nations officially ends on Saturday.
The 72-year-old is expected to return to his home in South Korea to retire.
Ban has been both praised and criticized during his time as UN secretary general.
“I am a child of the United Nations. After the Korean War, UN aid fed us. UN textbooks taught us. UN global solidarity showed us we were not alone. For me, the power of the United Nations was never abstract or academic. It is the story of my life.”
Born in 1944 in the Republic of South Korea, Ban is the 8th secretary general of the UN.
He took up the post In January 2007, replacing Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan.
In 2011, Ban was unanimously elected to a second term as leader of the 193-member world body
Ban took the first foreign trip of his term to attend the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in January 2007 as part of an effort to reach out to the Group of 77.
He repeatedly identified Darfur as the top humanitarian priority of his administration.
He played a large role, with several face-to-face meetings with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, in convincing Sudan to allow UN peacekeepers to enter the Darfur region.
On 31 July 2007 the United Nations Security Council approved sending 26,000 UN peacekeepers into the region to join 7,000 troops from the African Union.
The resolution was heralded as a major breakthrough in confronting the Darfur conflict. The first phase of the peacekeeping mission began in October 2007.
In December 2011 he became the first UN Secretary General to visit war-torn Somalia in decades. Three years later he was back in the country too.
But Ban’s relationship with Africa has also been checkered.
Kenya and the UN are at loggerheads after Ban fired the Kenyan commander of the UN mission in South Sudan.
That saw Nairobi withdraw its troops from the mission.
The UN chief has also come under fire following a string of allegations of sexual abuse by peacekeepers in Africa.
Ban Ki-moon is leaving behind a long legacy as the head of the UN.
But there are also several issues that his successor Antonio Guterres will have to focus on.
They include several conflicts in Africa – most recently the ongoing troubles in South Sudan.
Ban is publishing a 345page brief for Guterres on the various challenges and successes.
