Numerous possible contenders are currently being discussed in the election for the post of UN secretary-general, with last-minute applications being submitted as the current group of seven candidates seeks to secure support. The Guardian reports, according to UNN.
Details
As the publication reports, numerous candidates who joined the race for the post of the new UN secretary-general at the last minute are currently being discussed, amid fears that the world's powers may fail to agree on a successor to António Guterres from among the current seven candidates.
"After three rounds of secret voting, no clear favorite has yet emerged, and it is likely that only three candidates still have a realistic chance of securing the necessary support. The new leader, who is due to take office in January, will head an organization at the beginning of a reform program aimed at cutting costs and regarded as marginal in the context of the major global conflicts," the publication writes.
It is noted that polls still indicate strong international public support for the organization, with the public blaming world leaders at least as much as the UN itself for its recent failures.
A poll conducted by GeoPoll for the UN Foundation and published last week found that six in ten people trust the UN to address issues that matter to them, but 85% of respondents said they had heard nothing or almost nothing about the process of electing a new secretary-general.
The election winner must secure the support of nine sitting members of the 15-member Security Council, with none of the Council's five permanent members—France, the United Kingdom, China, Russia and the United States—casting a veto.
Reaching consensus among the five permanent members is a difficult task, given the depth of the political divisions. Guterres's term ends on December 31.
Among the names mentioned as potential late-stage candidates are Lana Nusseibeh, a UAE minister of state and former UAE ambassador to the UN, as well as Sigrid Kaag, a former UN under-secretary-general and Dutch centrist politician. She briefly served as the senior humanitarian and reconstruction coordinator in the Gaza Strip before joining the advisory committee to Donald Trump's Board of Peace.
Other candidates mentioned include Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the president of Kazakhstan, as well as Viktor Orbán, the former prime minister of Hungary, whom Trump still greatly respects but whom many European leaders condemn as a destructive populist.
Vuk Jeremić, the former Serbian president of the UN General Assembly, who came second to Guterres in the 2016 election, was also mentioned.
The publication also notes that much may in fact depend on political bargaining between the US president and China's leader Xi Jinping, as well as on whether Trump recognizes that the UN's future matters more to China than it does to him; this could mean agreeing to a candidate who suits China and is acceptable to the United States.
It appears that during Mike Waltz's tenure as US ambassador to the UN, the Trump administration somewhat softened its skeptical attitude toward the organization. The United States not only allocated an additional $1.8 billion for humanitarian needs in March, but also recently paid $827 million toward its membership dues—although this amount is less than a quarter of the total arrears owed to the organization, which is facing an acute shortage of funds.
The US paid off part of its debt to the UN to avoid losing its voting rights17.09.26, 08:23
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