The United Nations (UN) has kickstarted the process of selecting its next Secretary-General to succeed the Portuguese-Timorese statesman and diplomat António Guterres in 2027.
- •The global body will begin interactive dialogues with candidates this week, where they'll provide more insight into their vision statements, curriculum vitae, and campaign financing disclosures to member states and NGOs
- • Four candidates have been nominated so far: Chile's former president Michelle Bachelet; Costa Rica's Rebeca Grynspan who is the current Secretary-General of the UNCTAD; Argentinian diplomat Rafael Grossi; and Senegal's former president Macky Sall.
- •Macky Sall's candidacy is controversial, as the appointment to the position is based on set rules and custom such as geographical rotation, and member states are also pushing for the body's first woman appointee.
The elaborate process officially begun last November, and is set to take months before the General Assembly settles on the next Secretary-General, who is the Head of the UN and oversees the UN Secretariat. Once a candidate has been nominated by a member state and gone through the initial stages, s/he must be nominated by the Security Council and recommended to the General Assembly.
Because of the structure of the global body, this gives the five permanent members of the UN Security Council the power to veto a nomination. As a compromise by custom, an appointee can not be a citizen from any of the five permanent members, the position is rotational among regions.
The position also does not have a set term limit, but every appointee since 1961, except the Egyptian diplomat Boutros Boutros-Ghali whose re-selection was vetoed by the US in 1996, has been re-selected for a second and final term of five years. Boutros-Ghali was replaced by Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan, keeping the appointment within the African bloc until 2006.
Attempts at making the process more transparent have mostly failed. In 2016, the UN used public debates for the first time, but the Security Council's process remained private.
Why Macky Sall Has Divided the Continent
The geographical rotational custom is the primary reason why Macky Sall's candidature is controversial, although not the only one. He is the only candidate who is not from Latin America, which is supposed to produce the next appointee by UN customs.
He has not been endorsed by the African Union, despite being nominated by current AU Chair Burundi, or even his home country Senegal. In a statement in late March, the African Union Commission said 20 member states had declined to endorse Sall's nomination either because Burundi did not follow set procedure, or because the process had been rushed.
Burundi is said to have the support of several countries, including permanent member France, in pushing for Sall's candidature. Burundi's decision to nominate him shortly after itself taking over the rotational AU Chair also unsettled diplomats eager to maintain good relations between the African and Latin American blocs.
