The United Nations has promised a fair, transparent, and inclusive process in the selection of the next Secretary General, whose term will begin on January 1, 2022. To date, the only officially recognized candidate is Antonio Guterres, the incumbent, who is seeking a second term. Guterres submitted his formal signed letter of candidacy and accompanying CV to the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council, who made his candidacy official by distributing Guterres' letter and CV to the UN's member states. Four other applicants for Guterres' job have also submitted their formal signed letters and CVs to the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council. However, their candidacies are stillborn until the two presidents distribute their letters and CVs to the member states. To date, that has not happened. As of now, Guterres is running in a one-man election.
Akanksha Arora wants to shake things up at the sclerotic UN bureaucracy
One possible explanation for why Guterres' candidacy alone has been officially blessed is that only his candidacy was presented in writing by a member state – his home country of Portugal. The other four who seek his job have received no member state endorsements to date. All that the General Assembly president's spokesperson could offer as a justification for the distinction was that "candidates had traditionally been presented by Member States; that had been the precedent." However, past Secretary General elections are not a reliable guide to what is supposed to become a fairer, more transparent, and more inclusive process. Moreover, there is no official UN document that has been publicly identified which states that a potential candidate for the Secretary General position must be presented in writing by one or more member states in order to qualify.
The president of the General Assembly this session is Volkan Bozkir from Turkey. The presidency of the Security Council rotates monthly among its 15 members. The Security Council president for the month of March is the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield. The two presidents met on March 9th to discuss, among other things, "the Secretary-General selection and appointment process," according to a readout of the meeting. However, no details have been made public as to the substance of their discussion, particularly what they intend to do about the other four applicants for Guterres' job. Perhaps they are taking the pulse in private of key member states before deciding on how to proceed. But that would directly contradict the UN's claim of transparency. My follow-up questions to the General Assembly president's spokesperson have gone unanswered.
One of Guterres' would-be rivals is a young woman from India, who has worked at UN headquarters for the last four years as an auditor. Akanksha Arora is her name and she wants to shake things up at the sclerotic UN bureaucracy.
UN's bloated bureaucracy
On February 17th, Arora, as she likes to be called, submitted her formal letter of application as candidate to serve as Secretary General for the next term. She has taken a leave of absence from her present job as audit coordinator for the United Nations Development Program to pursue what many might consider to be a fool's errand. But Arora is determined to use her candidacy as a platform to call for fundamental reforms and change of direction at the UN.
"We are not living up to our purpose or our promise. We are failing those we are here to serve," Arora's letter of application stated. "There are consequences to our shortcomings. Much of the world has come to view the UN as an institution that talks too much, spends too much and does too little."
Arora is raising issues that deserve to be heard with a sense of urgency. She demands a frank discussion, not the usual reform commission reports that lie on shelves gathering dust.
Drawing on her knowledge of UN finances from her work inside of the organization, Arora zeroed in on the wasteful spending she has observed. She claimed that less than 30 cents of every dollar spent by the UN from its total annual revenues go to the beneficiaries. Most of the money goes to the UN's bloated bureaucracy. "We spend our resources on holding conferences, writing reports," Arora said in an interview. "We have lost course on why we exist, what we're supposed to do." She has blamed the UN's failure to fulfill its mission on a failure of leadership. "Their need to serve politicians over people and their affinity for rhetoric over results is what got us here," she complained. "In a world that begs our leadership, the UN has become a mere spectator."
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If Arora, other three applicants are prevented by the UN bureaucracy from even getting into the starting gate, UN's claim of fairness, transparency, inclusiveness will be a complete farce
Arora is less than half Antonio Guterres' age. She has no diplomatic experience, in contrast to Guterres' years of public service as prime minister of Portugal, president of the European Council, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and, of course, his first term as Secretary General. But that has not stopped Arora from taking on Guterres directly without any reservations. "He's failed as a leader in reforming the institution," Arora said in an interview with PassBlue. "He's failed as a leader to refugees; he was leading the refugee agency before coming here, so he knows the plight of refugees. He knows their pain, hope, better than most of us, because he served them. Yet when he came, he didn't make any decision to prioritize resources to them."
The incumbent Secretary General is widely expected to prevail easily and win a second term. But that does not mean that Arora's candidacy is a waste of time. Official candidates for the Secretary General office are provided with the opportunity to publicly present their visions for the UN's future to the member states' UN ambassadors and to answer their questions. If Arora has an opportunity to make her case in a public forum like Secretary General Guterres will have, the UN diplomats and the public will at least be provided with a very different, unvarnished perspective about the United Nations from someone who knows the UN well from the inside. They certainly won't get this angle from Guterres, who speaks in the language of diplomatic jargon.
If Arora and the other three applicants are prevented by the UN bureaucracy from even getting into the starting gate, the UN's claim of fairness, transparency, and inclusiveness in the Secretary General selection process will turn out to be a complete farce. The election will become nothing more than a coronation of the incumbent Secretary General for another term.
The United Nations has promised a fair, transparent, and inclusive process in the selection of the next Secretary General, whose term will begin on January 1, 2022. To date, the only officially recognized candidate is Antonio Guterres, the incumbent, who is seeking a second term. Guterres submitted his formal signed letter of candidacy and accompanying CV to the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council, who made his candidacy official by distributing Guterres' letter and CV to the UN's member states. Four other applicants for Guterres' job have also submitted their formal signed letters and CVs to the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council. However, their candidacies are stillborn until the two presidents distribute their letters and CVs to the member states. To date, that has not happened. As of now, Guterres is running in a one-man election.
