Ban Ki-moon, Former UN Secretary-General, Released his Memoir in Spanish
“Hijo de la guerra, hombre de paz. Unir naciones en un mundo dividido” is the first Spanish edition of Ban Ki-moon’s memoir and the result of the joint editorial work of UC Chile, Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, and Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico.
photo_camera Ban Ki-moon was the eighth Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) from January 2007 to December 2016. He based his term on his personal experience that international solidarity is a matter of life and death. (Attribution: Communications Department of the International Labor Organization (ILO) of Switzerland, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons).
"My childhood memories have nothing to do with war, but with peace, and with the power of international support," Ban Ki-moon writes in his memoir "Hijo de la guerra, hombre de paz. Unir naciones en un mundo dividido."
Ban Ki-moon was born a little over a year before the UN—an institution that has played a key role in his life—was founded.
As a child, he grew up hearing bombs falling in his Korean hometown. His family fled and walked for miles in mud-soaked shoes while starving. They were eventually rescued by United Nations troops. Ki-moon became determined to repay that support and years later became UN Secretary-General, a position he held for ten years (2007-2017).
His memoir is an account of that life.
A Collaborative Effort
The book was first published in June 2021 under the title “Resolved: Uniting Nations in a Divided World".
Now, its Spanish version has just been released thanks to the joint efforts of three Latin American universities: UC Chile, Universidad de los Andes in Colombia and Tecnológico de Monterrey (TEC) in México. Together they form "La Tríada," a cooperative alliance that echoes Ki-moon’s message.
The publishers of the three universities—Ediciones UC, Ediciones Uniandes and Editorial Digital del Tecnológico de Monterrey—worked together to offer the text to the Spanish-speaking audience.
This is the first co-edition of a book by La Tríada.
The collaboration began with the purchase of the translation rights by Uniandes.
TEC then adapted the contents to a digital format and created an ePub version of the book (available in various stores).
The distribution rights of the book include its publication in Spanish within Latin America, which covers: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
A virtual event was held on Monday, December 12 as a way to celebrate the shared effort and launch of the joint publication. The event was attended by all three university presidents and former Secretary Ban Ki-moon.
The depth of this story encourages reflection on the prosperity and union of nations.
What is the Book About?
Hijo de la guerra, hombre de paz is the memoir of Ban Ki-moon, a diplomatic statesman and former secretary of the United Nations.
In it, he talks about the moments in his life that shaped him and drove him to be an agent of change in favor of collective action, which for him is the main source of hope in the face of threats of violence arising from war.
Ban Ki-moon served as the eighth UN Secretary-General between January 2007 and December 2016, a period in which he took on the commitment to create a better world based on his personal experience that international solidarity is a matter of life and death.
In the book, he also points out that his concern is still valid because of the divisions between countries, the hateful rhetoric of certain world leaders, and the threats to multilateralism, which jeopardize peace. All of this is mainly due to a lack of understanding and recognition between different cultures, countries, and regions.
His book is a call to act soon and work together to overcome the challenges we face in this century.
Hijo de la guerra, hombre de paz. Unir naciones en un mundo dividido is available at ediciones.uc.cl.
(Header photo: DAVOS/SWITZERLAND, 27JAN11 - Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General, United Nations, New York looks on during the session 'Combating Chronic Disease' at the Annual Meeting 2011 of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 27, 2011. Copyright by World Economic Forumswiss-image.ch/Photo by Remy Steinegger - Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic)
