Former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, together with the East-West Center in Hawaii, will be honored at the annual gala awards dinner of the Pacific Century Institute at Century City’s Intercontinental Hotel on Feb. 23.
Ban will be honored with the PCI 2017 Individual Building Bridges Award for his work in striving for peace in the current complex international environment, for persistently working to create a consensus for dramatic climate action, for creating the ceiling-puncturing UN WOMEN, and for many other striking international initiatives and institutional reforms at the UN during his remarkable tenure, reports Asia Media International.
In 2016, Foreign Policy magazine named Ban one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for his achievement in making the Paris Agreement on climate change a legally binding treaty less than a year after it was adopted.
Past recipients of the PCI award have included U.S. Defense Secretary Harold Brown; Hoover Institution Fellow, Nuclear Arms Expert and former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry; U.S. Ambassador Christopher Hill and Maestro Lorin Maazel, conductor of the New York Philharmonic’s 2008 performance trip to Pyongyang.
PCI Chairman Don Gregg said in a statement, “It is a deep honor for PCI to present world statesmen Ban Ki-moon with the 2017 Individual Building Bridges Award. Whether as South Korea’s foreign minister or afterwards as UN Secretary General, this humble, hard-working, skilled diplomat has offered an inspiring example of selfless public service, first for his country, and then for the world.”
