The United Nations was never supposed to work like this. For eight decades, the process of selecting its most powerful official, the closest thing the world has to a global leader, has been conducted behind closed doors. There was a common theme of backroom diplomacy between the five permanent members of the Security Council. On May 28th, that changed. At a public forum in London organised as part of the 1 for 8 Billion campaign, four of the leading candidates to succeed António Guterres took questions from a live audience, making the case for why they should inherit one of the most consequential jobs on earth. Last year was the organisation’s 80th anniversary. Whether this next era amounts to anything different seems to depend, in some part, on what the United Kingdom decides to do next.
The timing could hardly be more important. For starters, the United Nations enters into this contest under circumstances unimaginable for its creators. A poll carried out at the forum showed that only 4% of the attendees think that the organization still holds political influence. Wars in Gaza and Ukraine have exposed the Security Council as a forum for vetoes rather than solutions. Mark Malloch Brown, a former UN deputy Secretary-General and an excellent analyst of the development of the organization, put it clearly: “The UN has become a mirror image of international affairs.” But what came through at this forum was that the people want more from their representatives. Not a general, but a secretary. A leader capable of driving transformation rather than managing decline.
Into this atmosphere stepped the candidates. Michelle Bachelet, the former Chilean president nominated by Brazil and Mexico, spoke with the authority of someone who has lived through political crisis in the most personal terms. Her father and mother were both imprisoned under Pinochet; she herself became the first woman to hold a series of major Chilean positions. She made the case for a Secretary-General who acts before disaster strikes rather than reacting to it. Looking at root causes rather than symptoms, she called for proactive mediation and a fundamental reform of international financial structures, with human rights and the empowerment of women at the centre of everything. Asked what she would have done differently on Gaza and Iran, her answer was characteristically direct: she would not have waited.
Maria Fernanda Espinosa, the former president of the UN General Assembly, offered what she described as an insider and outsider perspective, someone who has worked across every pillar of the institution but has never been captured by any single one. She was the most rhetorically assured of the four, speaking in the register of someone who understands that the Secretary-General’s most important tool is language. Her vision centred on a leaner, more agile UN, one that could manage the challenge of artificial intelligence, reverse the growing gap between sustainable development as aspiration and as action, and genuinely include young people not as the future of the institution but, as she put it, as its present. On the question of veto power in the Security Council, she was realistic to the point of candour: the veto is written into the charter, the Secretary-General’s role is quiet diplomacy, and personal opinions do not count. It was a moment that illustrated both her political intelligence and the fundamental limits of the role she is seeking.
Rafael Grossi, the Argentine director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, made an explicitly realist case. His argument rested on personal credibility, a track record of operating in the space between hostile powers, working in some of the world’s most dangerous diplomatic theatres. He was sceptical of new offices and special representatives, arguing instead for direct action by the Secretary-General on women’s rights and other core obligations. Where Bachelet and Espinosa projected transformation, Grossi projected competence. The question his candidacy raises is whether competence, however proven, is enough for a moment that may demand something more disruptive.
Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of the UN trade and development body UNCTAD, spoke with the urgency of someone who regards the UN’s current trajectory as genuinely dangerous. Her most striking contribution was on structure: the office of the Secretary-General, she argued, must be rebuilt from the ground up. Bureaucratic and pyramidal, it is not fit for the kind of fast, flexible diplomacy the world now requires. She cited her own experience navigating Costa Rica’s involvement in the Ukraine crisis with a team of five. The financial crisis facing the UN, with the UN heavily dependent on contributions from a small number of major member states, particularly the United States and China, is, she said, an existential threat that previous Secretaries-General have consistently avoided confronting. She would not.
Running through all four presentations was a striking degree of consensus on what the UN most urgently needs: prevention over reaction, genuine inclusion of civil society, a financial model that does not leave the organisation vulnerable to political blackmail, and a Secretary-General with the room and the investment from member states to actually lead. The convergence suggests that the diagnosis of the institution’s problems is no longer in dispute. What remains in dispute is whether the member states, and particularly the five permanent Security Council members, are willing to let anyone act on it.
This is where Britain’s role becomes uncomfortable. Malloch Brown was direct about it: the UK has been too passive, too willing to defer to Washington’s preferences, and has consistently fallen short of the influence its Security Council seat should give it. His prescription was specific. The British government should publicly insist that the next Secretary-General must have the full, demonstrated support of the General Assembly, not merely the approval of the P5. It is a modest ask. It is also, apparently, more than the government has been willing to offer so far.
The 1 for 8 Billion campaign has done something valuable by forcing this process into the open. A public forum cannot substitute for genuine reform of the selection process, but it has at least established that the candidates can be questioned, scrutinised and compared, that the person who will speak for eight billion people can be asked, in public, whether they are up to the job. Britain now faces a version of the same question. In a year when the world is looking for someone to rescue multilateralism, this country has a rare opportunity to shape who that person is. Whether it takes that opportunity, or once again waits to see what Washington decides, will say something important about what kind of power Britain now considers itself to be.
