Change at the UN?

Wednesday, 14 December 2016 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

A new United Nations Secretary General was sworn in this week, though it was not a woman who won the race as was hoped by some. But the appointment, analysts hope, will mean change for the archaic and red tape-swathed global institution.

Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres was sworn in on Monday as the ninth United Nations Secretary-General, pledging to personally help broker peace in various conflicts in a landmark move.

Guterres, 67, will replace Ban Ki-moon, 72, of South Korea on 1 January. Ban steps down at the end of 2016 after two five-year terms. Guterres was Portugal’s Prime Minister from 1995 to 2002 and UN High Commissioner for Refugees from 2005 to 2015.

Guterres beat out 12 other candidates, seven of whom were women, amid a push for the first woman to be elected. But he said on Monday he aimed to have gender parity among senior UN leadership within his five-year term.

Diplomats said Guterres is expected to shortly name Nigeria’s environment minister Amina Mohammed as his Deputy Secretary-General. He is also planning to appoint a woman as his Chief-of-Staff before the end of the year.

Before her appointment as Environment Minister a year ago, Mohammed was UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s special adviser on post-2015 development planning – a role that culminated last year with the adoption by the General Assembly of sustainable development goals for the next 15 years.

Guterres is the first former head of government to be elected to run the world body and that experience will be reflected in how he operates. Diplomats were now watching to see who Guterres appoints to senior UN positions amid speculation by diplomats and UN officials that China would like one of its nationals to head peacekeeping and that Russia is keen to have a senior role.

In a rare show of unity, all 15 ambassadors from the Security Council emerged from the sixth in a series of straw polls to announce that they had agreed on Guterres. The fact that he was promising to be an activist on humanitarian causes also makes his victory surprising, as both Russia and China in particular have been resistant to outspoken activists in top UN posts.

Guterres’s appointment has been hailed around the world but the Portuguese politician was at the helm of the UN’s refugee organisation precisely when the refugee crisis began to spiral out of control. The UN has so far been unable to galvanise support for any significant solutions to the problem, described as the worst humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.

The UNHCR – which Guterres ran until December – estimates that 34,000 people are forced from their homes every day, and there are now 21.3 million refugees, half of them children. The new Secretary General has indicated that he wants to push powerful countries to use their resources to prevent conflicts rather than the expensive exercise of managing them.

It is unlikely that Guterres would change the UN stance on Sri Lanka and its reconciliation commitments but a clearer viewpoint could emerge closer to March when Colombo has to present a progress report before the UNHRC.