Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations, will receive an Honorary Degree from the University of Cambridge, this week’s Cambridge University Reporter revealed.

The South Korean statesman, who succeeded Kofi Annan to become the UN’s eighth Secretary-General in 2007, will receive the honour on 3rd February at 11 am.

The special Congregation will take place at the Senate-House, where the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, will invite Ban to receive his honorary Doctor of Law degree.

The Secretary-General took his bachelor’s degree in International Relations as Seoul National University before studying for a Master’s degree in Public Administration at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

The ceremony will also include an address by the Secretary-General to the Congregation after the degree is awarded.

Prior to becoming Secretary-General, Ban was South Korea’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade between 2004 and 2006, during which time he was involved in aid and trade deals that were influential in his candidacy for Secretary-General.

His career has also included 37 years of service in South Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade as a diplomat, working on briefs including national security and foreign policy and being stationed in Washington, D.C., and Vienna.

He first became involved with the United Nations in 1974, when he worked for the UN Division of the Ministry.

During his eight years as Secretary-General, he has reformed UN peacekeeping and employment practices, promoting accountability for human rights contraventions by setting up inquiries related to Gaza, Guinea, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, legal processes in Lebanon and Cambodia, and advocacy for R2P, or the ‘responsibility to protect’, the new UN norm which aims at preventing or halting genocide and other crimes against humanity.

Ban has also worked to strengthen the UN’s response to humanitarian disasters, such as Myanmar in 2008, Haiti in 2010 and Pakistan in the same year. He has also mobilised UN support for democratic transitions in North Africa and the Middle East, in addition to rejuvenating attempts at multilateral nuclear disarmament, in accordance with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

He has given significant backing to the promotion of women’s rights – his tenure has seen the creation of the UN Women organisation and the establishment of a Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict.

The Honorary Degree Congregation will be declared a ‘scarlet day’, when those holding doctorates wear their ‘festal’ gowns and all university members attending wear academical dress.

Buildings belonging to the university and colleges will fly flags to mark the occasion, while the bells of Great St Mary’s will ring out.

The university has been conferring honorary degrees for approximately 500 years. One of the earliest recorded was the Honorary Doctorate given to poet John Skelton in 1493.

Other political figures to have received honorary degrees from the university include former US Senator George Mitchell, former House of Commons Speaker Betty Boothroyd, and Lib Dem peer Shirley Williams. Among other figures who have received them are economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen and former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.