The
Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the
Secretariat, one of the principal organs of the
United Nations. The Secretary-General acts as the
de facto spokesperson and leader of the United Nations.
The current Secretary-General is
Ban Ki-moon of
South Korea. He became Secretary-General on
1 January 2007, and his first term will expire on
31 December 2011.
Role
The Secretary-General was envisioned by
Franklin D. Roosevelt as a "world moderator," but the office was defined in the
UN Charter as the organization's "chief administrative officer" (Article 97). Nevertheless, this more restricted description hasn't prevented the office holders from speaking out and playing important roles on global issues, to various degrees.
The official residence of the Secretary-General is a four-story
townhouse in the
Sutton Place neighborhood of
Manhattan in
New York City. The townhouse was built for
Anne Morgan in 1921, and donated to the United Nations in 1972.
Term and selection
Secretaries-General serve for renewable five-year terms; most have served two terms. The
Charter provides for the Secretary-General to be appointed by the
General Assembly upon the nomination of the
Security Council. Therefore, the selection is subject to the
veto of any of the five permanent members of the Security Council.
The Charter's minimal language has since been supplemented by other procedural rules and accepted practices. In practice, the Secretary-General can't be a national of any of the permanent members of the Security Council. An accepted practice of regional rotation has also been adopted in the selection of successive candidates. This has strangely, though, resulted in no North American holder of the office. The ability of candidates to converse in both English and French is also considered an unofficial qualification for the office.
Most Secretaries-General are compromise-candidates from
middle powers and with little prior fame. High-profile candidates are often touted for the job, but are almost always rejected as unpalatable to some. For instance, figures like
Charles de Gaulle,
Dwight Eisenhower and
Anthony Eden were considered for the first Secretary-General position, but were rejected in favour of the uncontroversial
Norwegian Trygve Lie. Due to
international politics and mechanicisms of
political compromise, there are many similarities between the process and ideals for selecting the Secretary-General and those of selecting leading figures in other international organizations, including the
election of Popes in the
Roman Catholic Church. Only one Secretary-General,
Dag Hammarskjöld, has died in office.
In the early 1960s,
Soviet ruler
Nikita Khrushchev led an effort to abolish the Secretary-General position. The numerical superiority of the Western powers combined with the
one state, one vote system meant that the Secretary-General would come from one of them, and would typically be sympathetic towards the West. Khrushchev advanced a proposal to replace the Secretary-General with a three-person leading council (a "
troika"): one member from the
West, one from the
Communist states, and one from the
Non-Aligned powers. This idea failed because the neutral powers failed to back the Soviet proposal.
Secretaries-General
Note:
Alger Hiss was Secretary-General of the
United Nations Conference on International Organization, held in April to June 1945.
| UN Regional Group |
Secretaries-General |
| Western European and Others |
3 |
| Eastern European Group |
0 |
| Latin American and Caribbean Group |
1 |
| Asian Group |
2 |
| African Group |
2 |
2006 selection
When the race to succeed
Kofi Annan began in 2006, it was widely expected the successful candidate would be Asian, since a number of Security Council members (including
China, which has a veto) indicated they'd only support an Asian candidate.
Noting that all Secretaries-General to date have been men,
Equality Now launched a campaign for the election of a female Secretary-General, and identified a ‘sampling’ of 18 qualified women, including
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga,
Louise Arbour,
Gro Harlem Brundtland,
Helen Clark and
Tarja Halonen. Equality Now also noted that there are many qualified Asian women, including
Aung San Suu Kyi from
Burma,
Sadako Ogata from
Japan,
Nafis Sadik from
Pakistan,
Anson Chan from
Hong Kong, and Leticia Shahani from the
Philippines.. The idea of a female Secretary-General received some support (including from Kofi Annan and US Ambassador to the UN
John Bolton), but no Asian women were nominated.
Nominees
Seven candidates were officially nominated for the position:
A number of other potential candidates were mentioned by commentators but didn't run, including
Bill Clinton (former President of the
United States),
Helen Clark (
Prime Minister of
New Zealand if not re-elected in 2005),
Jean Chrétien (former Prime Minister of
Canada),
Anwar Ibrahim (former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia),
Goh Chok Tong (
Senior Minister of the
Republic of Singapore),
José Ramos Horta (
Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and then Prime Minister of
East Timor),
Aleksander Kwaśniewski (former President of
Poland), and
Tony Blair (Former
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom).,
14 September,
28 September and
2 October in which each of the 15 member states were asked whether they'd ‘encourage’ or ‘discourage’ each of the official candidates (or if they'd ‘no opinion’ on the candidate). Ban Ki-moon topped each of these polls. In the fourth poll, Ban emerged as the only candidate with the support of all five permanent members, each of whom has the power to veto candidates. After the vote,
Shashi Tharoor, who finished second, withdrew his candidacy and
China's Permanent Representative to the UN told reporters that "it is quite clear from today's straw poll that Minister Ban Ki-moon is the candidate that the Security Council will recommend to the General Assembly".
Zeid and Ghani withdrew from the race on
4 October . They were followed on 5 October by Surakiart and Vīķe-Freiberga, leaving only Ban in the race. The Security Council conducted a formal vote on
9 October, and forwarded its choice to the General Assembly, which then elected him on
13 October .
External results
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