Los Angeles – His Excellency Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary General for the last ten years (2007-2016), and the esteemed East-West Center in Hawaii, founded in 1960, will be honored at the annual gala awards dinner of the Pacific Century Institute later this month in Los Angeles.
Ban, who stepped down from the UN post after the maximum two terms on 31 December 2016, will accept 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.
The former UN chief will make special comments at the awards dinner 23 February, at the Intercontinental Hotel in Century City, Los Angeles. This elegant award to an outstanding international figure is presented annually; past recipients include, among many other distinguished recipients, former 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.
Said PCI Chairman Don Gregg: “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.” Ban’s wife Yoo Soon-taek, active in UN WOMEN and other international gender issues, and over the last ten years present on many of the Secretary General’s world trips, will accompany her husband on the flight from Seoul for the ceremony.
In addition, PCI’s 2017 Institutional Building Bridges Award to the East-West Center will be accepted by the East-West Center’s longtime president, Dr. Charles E. Morrison, who has held this key role for close to two decades. EWC was established by Congress in 1960 to serve as a new bridge between America and the Asia Pacific region. No one who has labored in the fields of Asian Studies has not been grateful for the EWC’s leading edge policy work. (In 2015, the recipient of the PCI ‘institutional’ award was the famed think-tank RAND, with headquarters in Southern California.)
Commented PCI Chairman Don Gregg, “Building bridges – with and by key institutions as well as with and by larger-than-life political personalities – is essential to helping maintain the peace in the Pacific region and the world. For one evening every February, we at PCI pause to honor those special individuals and institutions that are the true peace-contributors of our time.”
For further detail, go to:
Click to access Special_Edition_PCI_Newsletter_Winter_2017.pdf
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For further information: email pci@pacificcenturyinst.org
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