The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon took the United Nations pulpit live to cyberspace for the first time recently, answering questions submitted through Facebook, LiveStream, Twitter and other social media networks on issues ranging from UN reform and the Middle East conflict to poverty and food security.

The ‘Global Conversation,’ lasting just over half an hour and moderated by Juju Chang of the United States ABC television network, saw Ban sitting in a studio at UN Headquarters in New York as he fielded questions from countries as far apart as China and Canada, and South Africa and the Philippines.

More than 5,500 questions were sent in over recent weeks in the six official UN languages – Arabic, Chinese English, French, Russian and Spanish – as well as in Portuguese and Swahili, while others came in live during the event, which was simultaneously translated into Chinese through the Weibo social media network.

The first question, in Spanish on Twitter, asked when the UN would be reformed to match today’s needs, and Ban stressed the complexity of making decisions in an organisation numbering 193 members.

Some questions dealt with more general issues such as peacekeeping and corruption (“It is the cancer of our society, it must stop,” Ban said), while others targeted specific topics such as the Palestinian issue (“I’m a strong supporter of this twostate vision” – Palestine and Israel), and war-torn and faminestricken Somalia (“I sincerely hope the international community will provide the generous humanitarian assistance”).