The first UN Secretary-General, Trygve Lie, defined his work in this way. On the 77th anniversary of the international organization, we look at the profile of its leaders, the requirements candidates for the position must meet and the major challenges
The 77th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations Organization on October 24, 1945, is a more than appropriate time to review the role and functions of the United Nations Secretary-General, probably the most difficult or impossible task in history. the world. world. The chronicles say it was described in this way by the first general secretary, Trygve Lie, when he handed it over to his successor, Dag Hammarskjöld, in 1953.
Since then, the secretaries-general of this international organization have succeeded each other, nine of them with the current head, the Portuguese António Guterres. Until now, there was no woman, although in Guterres’ election there were several candidates applying for such a coveted and complex position. It also tested for the first time a new, more transparent, open and inclusive selection and nomination process, with a process for applying for applications from Member States, announcing the names of the candidates and hearings, dialogues or meetings with all of them to present their vision and their proposals for the position.
professional profiles
The chosen individual is expected to embodies the highest degree of efficiency, competence and integrity and demonstrate a strong commitment to the purposes and principles of the United Nations. More specifically, the revamped selection process requires states to submit nominations with proven leadership and management skills, extensive experience in international relations, and strong multilingual, diplomatic and communication skills, thus describing some of the inherent characteristics of this position.
Both the candidates in the 2016 selection process and the previous Secretaries-General are characterized by fairly similar professional profiles, such as experienced diplomats, senior officials of the United Nations itself or other international organizations, or political leaders of state with government experience.
António Guterres also fit this biographical profile when he was appointed in 2016 to a mandate that started on January 1, 2017, in competition with twelve other candidates. Guterres was a member of the Portuguese Parliament for the Socialist Party for many years, was Prime Minister of Portugal between 1995 and 2002 and was also appointed President of the Socialist International from 1995 to 2005. From 2005 to 2015, he was United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
As enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations, the Secretary-General of the organization is elected by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council. The 193 member states of the organization participate in the General Assembly and have one vote each, and the election is usually by acclamation. In this sense, the determining body is the Security Council, composed of 15 member states and where the role of the five permanent members (United States, Russia, China, Great Britain and France) who can veto the proposal is decisive.
The selection is thus politically determined, but not in the sense of the ideology or political family to which the candidate may belong, but in the sense that they are the member states of the Security Council, in particular the permanent members, who ultimately decide and recommend candidacy to the General Assembly.
On the one hand, therefore, also that, in addition to the individual ambitions of a candidate, it is the Member States that formulate the proposals for candidacy; and secondly, that it has been tacitly agreed that the person in charge of the General Secretariat cannot under any circumstances be a national of a permanent member state of the Security Council.
In addition to this tacit pact not to elect a national of permanent member states of the Security Council, it is also a tradition that the term of the mandate is five years with the option to choose an extension for another five years. This has been common practice, except in the case of Boutros-Ghali, who was vetoed by the United States in 1996 when he ran for a second term.
This designation for a second five-year term is so common that António Guterres found no competition when he ran for a second term, which began on January 1, 2022 and will end on December 31, 2026, without the burden of having to search again. -election.
Another unwritten rule is the criterion of geographical distribution across the five main groups of the United Nations (African States; Latin American and Caribbean States; Asian and Pacific States; Western European and Other States; and Eastern European States).
So after a Norwegian (Trygve Lie) and a Swede (Dag Hammarskjöld), a Burmese (U Thant), an Austrian (Kurt Waldheim), a Peruvian (Javier Pérez de Cuéllar), an Egyptian (Boutros Boutros-Ghali), a Ghanaian (Kofi Annan), a Korean (Ban Ki-moon) and finally with António Guterres, another Western European.
In reality, according to this geographical distribution criterion, in the 2016 elections, the position should have gone to a candidate from the Eastern European states, but the political agreement ultimately favored Guterres.
The United Nations Charter provides that the Secretary-General is “the chief administrative officer of the organization” and is responsible for all personnel and all administrative and bureaucratic structures necessary to support United Nations bodies normally of intergovernmental composition.
In addition to his administrative and support functions, there are also responsibilities of a more political-diplomatic nature that allow him to communicate both with the main organs of the United Nations and with the Member States, with discreet diplomacy and a lot of political skill . All this gives it significant international projection and a high degree of leadership and moral authority.
This projection and leadership, of course, depends on the capabilities of the head of the body on the one hand, and there have certainly been more active and visionary secretary generals than others. On the other hand, they are fundamentally dependent on the international context in which their mandate is carried out, ie whether it is in a favorable international situation and whether Member States are at least receptive to their proposals. A context that mobilizes the message and vision of the Secretary-General and ultimately spreads and capillaries itself politically and operationally in international society.
In this regard, and on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the organisation, in 2020 the General Assembly adopted a Declaration defining, among other things, twelve areas of action that could only be addressed through a revived multilateralism. As a follow-up to this statement, Secretary-General Guterres presented his recommendations to move this agenda forward in September 2021. The report, entitled Our Common Agenda, is highly suggestive and proactive and can be a real catalyst and a step forward towards a more effective multilateral system that can better meet current and future challenges.
However, the current international context, with the war in Ukraine and its many consequences, may make this necessary way forward impossible or at least very difficult. As impossible or difficult as the work of the person who embodies the Secretary-General of the United Nations proves to be. Despite all this, when he renewed for his second term, Guterres promised to work to “raise the hope that we can change things, that the impossible can be possible.”
This article was published in ‘The conversation‘.
Source: La Verdad
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