United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres will commence his duties as secretary general on January 1, 2017, succeeding Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Guterres took the oath of office on December 12th in a ceremony presided over by the president of the UN General Assembly. Mr. Guterres, a former Socialist prime minister of Portugal, former UN high commissioner for refugees, and president of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005, then delivered an address outlining his priority to restore trust in the United Nations. “Our duty to the people we serve,” he said, “is to work together to move from fear of each other to trust in each other. Trust in the values that bind us, and trust in the institutions that serve us.” Mr. Guterres emphasized the important role that the UN could play in preventing conflicts. He also wants the UN to become a more nimble institution which focuses “more on delivery and less on process, more on people and less on bureaucracy.”
The UN today is a bloated organization, which is rightly perceived as non-transparent, non-accountable, ineffective and, at times, hypocritical.
United Nations Secretary General designate Antonio Guterres will commence his duties as secretary general on January 1, 2017, succeeding Ban Ki-moon. Mr. Guterres took the oath of office on December 12th in a ceremony presided over by the president of the UN General Assembly. Mr. Guterres, a former Socialist prime minister of Portugal, former UN high commissioner for refugees, and president of the Socialist International from 1999 to 2005, then delivered an address outlining his priority to restore trust in the United Nations. “Our duty to the people we serve,” he said, “is to work together to move from fear of each other to trust in each other. Trust in the values that bind us, and trust in the institutions that serve us.” Mr. Guterres emphasized the important role that the UN could play in preventing conflicts. He also wants the UN to become a more nimble institution which focuses “more on delivery and less on process, more on people and less on bureaucracy.”
The Secretary General designate has his work cut out for him. The UN today is a bloated organization, which is rightly perceived as non-transparent, non-accountable, ineffective and, at times, hypocritical. And he will have to deal with President-elect Donald Trump, a UN skeptic.
Following through on his promise to elevate women to senior UN positions, Mr. Guterres has reportedly decided to appoint Amina Mohammed, Nigeria’s environmental minister and former special adviser to Ban Ki-moon on post-2015 development planning, to serve in the number 2 spot as the deputy secretary general. This appointment would appear to signal Mr. Guterres’ determination not only to raise the profile of women in senior positions at the UN, but also to revert to his socialist roots in leading the United Nations.
We need trillions, not billions. The first one hundred billion is the signal that trillions will be attainable.”
While attending the final negotiations last year that led to the Paris Agreement on climate change, Ms. Mohammed emphasized the need for developed countries to contribute far more than the $100 billion a year they have already committed to provide, beginning in 2020. “The $100bn we are asking for is a signal from the international community that they are serious about the financing challenge for climate change,” Ms. Mohammed declared. “We need trillions, not billions. The first one hundred billion is the signal that trillions will be attainable.”
This blatant call for massive wealth redistribution from the United States and other developed countries, under the auspices of the UN, is not likely to sit well with President-elect Donald Trump. Mr. Trump has already vowed to cut off U.S. funding for UN climate change programs.
Moreover, given Mr. Guterres’ prior position leading the UN’s lead agency for aiding refugees, the Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, he and his deputy are likely to place great emphasis on continued resettlement of refugees from the Middle East and other terrorist-ridden regions. In the past, he has called objections to mass migration “irrational.” And, while he was serving as the head of the UN refugee agency, Christians seeking refugee status were largely bypassed in favor of Muslims. According to a Wall street Journal reporter who interviewed Mr. Guterres last December, “Mr. Guterres said that generally Syria’s Christians should not be resettled, because they are part of the ‘DNA of the Middle East.’”
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The Right to Asylum between Islamic Shari’ah and International Refugee Law: A Comparative Study
Far from expressing concern about the importing of sharia law norms into Western societies as a result of mass Muslim migration, the incoming secretary general wrote in his forward to his UN refugee agency-sponsored book, entitled “The Right to Asylum between Islamic Shari’ah and International Refugee Law: A Comparative Study,” that “all the principles embodied in modern international refugee law are to be found in the Shari’ah.”
The handling of refugees from regions of the world most beset by terrorism will be another flashpoint of disagreement between the incoming president of the United States, Donald Trump, and the incoming secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres.
The first year of each leader’s term will be very revealing as to how the relationship between them, and between the United States and the United Nations in general, evolves.
