11. A Better Process, a Stronger UN Secretary-General: How Historic Change Was Forged and What Comes Next
- Author:
- Yvonne Terlingen
- Publication Date:
- 06-2017
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Abstract:
- When on October 13, 2016, the General Assembly appointed by acclamation António Guterres of Portugal as the United Nations’ ninth secretary-general, there was a sense of excitement among the organization’s 193 members. For once, so it seemed, they felt they had played an important role not only in choosing the secretary-general but also in appointing a man generally considered to be an outstanding candidate for a position memorably described as “the most impossible job on this earth.”1 The five permanent, veto-wielding members of the Security Council (Perm Five) still exercised the greatest power in the selection process, as they always had in the past. Yet the candidate chosen appears, surprisingly, not to have been the first choice of either the United States or Russia, two of the Perm Five that until then had effectively chosen the secretary-general between them in an opaque and outdated process. It is doubtful that António Guterres would have been appointed if the General Assembly had not embarked on a novel process to select him. All previous secretaries-general were chosen on the basis of a haphazard and secretive process that occurred behind closed doors and was not merit based. The method to select the UN secretary-general is laid down in a few words in the UN Charter. Article 97 allocates responsibility for appointing the secretary-general to all members of the General Assembly acting on the recommendation of the Security Council. However, for the last seventy years—with one circumstance-specific exception2—the General Assembly has had no say in the selection: its member states merely rubber-stamped the decision of the Perm Five, which recommended just one candidate each time for the General Assembly to appoint. All previous secretaries-general were chosen on the basis of a haphazard and secretive process that occurred behind closed doors and was not merit based. The process was geared toward appointing the lowest common denominator candidate,3 but nevertheless produced a few outstanding secretaries-general. There has never been a female secretary-general, and until 2016 only three women had ever made it on a Security Council shortlist.4 The entire process lacked transparency and accountability and fell far short of the UN’s own standards and ideals, let alone the current recruitment practices for top international positions. Selections of all previous secretaries-general were made without appointment criteria, without a call for nominations or for CVs, without a timeline for nominations, and without public hearings or other effective methods of public scrutiny. In recent selections, candidates were often pushed into horse trading with the Security Council’s permanent members to gain their support in exchange for making promises of senior UN posts for their nationals. This has led to some countries holding monopolies over key posts.5 Moreover, the tradition of appointment for a five-year, once-renewable term, with reappointment controlled by the Perm Five, has effectively secured a secretary-general beholden to the Council’s most powerful members. The whole process “would be rejected as a bad joke by any serious institution in the private sector,” noted one senior UN authority who worked under multiple secretaries-general.
- Topic:
- United Nations, Leadership, Diversity, and Transparency
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus