Najam on the New UN Secretary-General
In an op-ed published in The Conversation, Dean Adil Najam of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University argues that while the choice of António Guterres as the next secretary-general of the United Nations is a good one, the process by which it was made remains seriously flawed.
Najam’s Op-Ed has since been republished in TIME, Business Insider and the Washington Diplomat.
Najam argued that while Guterres brings many important qualities to the post, the way we elect the secretary-general of the United Nations puts too much power in too few hands. While a number of changes were made in the process this time around, he believes that these were mostly cosmetic. They made the process ‘more open’ but not ‘more representative.’
Najam writes that “the next secretary-general of the United Nations, most everyone agreed, was supposed to be a woman. To be exact, a woman from Eastern Europe. Now it is clear that it is going to be António Guterres, former prime minister of Portugal. Guterres is not from Eastern Europe. And he’s certainly not a woman.”
This, he points out, has raised some doubts on the process with at least one female candidate, Argentine Foreign Minister Susana Malcorra, raising a red flag and saying: “You don’t have a chance if you’re a woman … It’s not a glass ceiling. It’s a steel ceiling.”
He points out that an even worse “steel ceiling” exists for any candidate that even one member of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council may not like.
From the text of October 7, 2016 Op-Ed, entitled “António Guterres To Be The Next UN Secretary-General: Good Choice, Bad Process”:
The way we choose the world’s chief diplomat has always been badly flawed. Essentially, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) find someone they can all live with. If even one says no to a candidate, the candidate is out… The result, most often, is a lowest-common-denominator choice.
… On balance, the process of selecting the world’s diplomat-in-chief this time around became a little more public, and a lot more interesting. However, it is no less flawed than it ever was.
Probably the last thing Guterres is thinking about right now is how the 10th secretary-general of the United Nations – his successor – will be selected. One hopes, however, that someone is thinking about that question and how it will be answered in five years, or 10. Hopefully, he would have helped open the process of selecting secretary-general even further – making it not just more public, but more representative.
You can read the full Op-Ed here.
Adil Najam is the Inaugural Dean of the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University and the former Vice Chancellor of the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) in Pakistan. Read more on him, here.