The UN Secretary General Travels: Where Do They Go & What Are the Consequences?

• In Event: The United Nations

Abstract

Where do UN Secretary Generals (UNSG) travel and what are consequences? As one of the most important political figures in global politics, UNSGs travel quite frequently in any given year. These visits by UNSGs are often much-anticipated, advertised, and celebrated, but few systematic analyses of UNSG travels and their consequences have been studied. In this project, we assemble the original dataset of UNSG travels: we take all UNSG travel documents and, utilizing automated text analysis, distill information including where they go, who they meet with, and what purposes of the travels are. The dataset (version 1.0) includes all the travels the UNSGs in the past 25 years have made, including Kofi Annan, Ki-moon Ban, and Antonio Guterres. After providing a broad set of descriptive analyses, we examine how UNSGs’ visits affect aid activities of foreign aid donors. We find that, after accounting for the selection, foreign aid increases to aid-recipients UNSGs visit. The effect is more pronounced for non-traditional, emerging state donors and private philanthropies. We also find that the effect changes across the three UNSGs covered in the analysis: the effect is the strongest for the Kofi Annan era and the weakest for Ki-moon Ban era. Lastly, there are some subtle changes of sectoral allocations of aid, generally matching what the presiding UNSG emphasizes during their tenure at the office.

Authors

• Ha-Eun Choi, Michigan State University

• Jihwan Jeong, Harvard University

• Byungwon Woo, Yonsei University

• Hyunjin Yim, Yonsei University