Candidates for the world’s top diplomatic post, United Nations secretary general, are to compete openly for the job for the first time as the current holder, Ban Ki-moon, prepares to step down at the end of this year, reports the Guardian.
The contenders are to explain their ideals and intentions in front of representatives from the 193 member nations next month at the UN general assembly and many will also hold unprecedented public debates in New York and London, facing questions from individuals and civil society organisations from around the world.
The London hustings will take place on June 3 in Central Hall Westminster, where the first UN secretary general, Trygve Lie, was chosen, and will also be co-hosted by, the United Nations Association – UK (UNA-UK) and the Future of the UN Development System (Funds), a policy institute mostly funded by European governments.
The April 13 event in New York will be staged in Civic Hall, a community centre and forum in the Flatiron district, in collaboration with the New America thinktank.
For the UN’s first 70 years, the secretary general was chosen behind closed doors by the major powers on the security council, and only then presented to the general assembly for approval. The choice was usually a function of geopolitical compromise, someone deemed at the time to be least likely to rock the boat.
So far seven candidates have declared their bids after a grassroots campaign to force the contest into the open. From 12-14 April, they and any additional contenders who enter will face the general assembly in what are being billed as “informal dialogues”, although like many general assembly events, prepared statements from both questioned and questioners are expected to dominate.
The hustings will be open to the press and public, to watch the candidates being quizzed on how best to reform the UN to make it more capable of responding to the global challenges of the 21st century, including climate change and mass killings that have sent more refugees moving across and between continents than at any other time since the World War II. The questions will be shaped in part through polling beforehand.
The contrast with previous secretary general contests, where candidates and their sponsoring governments campaigned almost entirely behind closed doors, could not be starker.
“Both the security council and the general assembly have given their approval, and now you have candidates being listed by the president of the general assembly with their CVs. This has never happened before. This is huge for us,” said Natalie Samarasinghe, the executive director of UNA-UK, who co-founded the campaign for an open contest, called 1 for 7bn, with the backing of some 750 NGOs with 170m supporters around the world.
The campaign also won the support of the UK government, which helped push through resolutions in both the security council and the general assembly calling for an open selection process late last year.
So far, most of the candidates who have put their names forward publicly are from eastern Europe, in line with an expectation pre-dating the open contest that the next secretary general would come from that region, which is yet to have a turn in the post.
They include an array of former foreign ministers: Vesna Pusić (Croatia), Srgjan Kerim (Macedonia), Igor Lukšić (Montenegro), Irina Bokova (Bulgaria), who is also director general of Unesco, Natalia Gherman (Moldova), and Danilo Türk, a former Slovenian president and assistant UN secretary general. They have been joined by António Guterres, the former head of the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, who became a prominent figure around the world during the refugee crisis.