Women Presidents of the UN General Assembly

When Sheikha Haya Rashed Al Khalifa of Bahrain was
appointed President of the sixty-first session of the UN General Assembly,
she became only the third woman to occupy the prestigious post (see UN
Chronicle Interview on page 10). The other two-Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of
India, who presided over the eighth session in 1953, and Angie Elisabeth
Brooks of Liberia, over the twenty-fourth session in 1969-each had to
chair during uncertain times for the United Nations. An examination of
their pasts offers a telling portrait of how far the world Organization
has gone in the last half century and how much further it has to go in
promoting gender equality.

Although these two women may have come
from very different backgrounds, there are striking similarities. Both
came from developing countries with close ties to the English-speaking
world. India was one of the first countries to gain independence from its
European colonizer during the tumultuous post-Second World War period,
becoming a sovereign State in 1947. Liberia, founded in 1847 by former
slaves from the United States of America, was the first independent
African republic. Both countries have a long history of women’s
empowerment.

UN photo/SOFIA PARIS

When Indira Gandhi, a niece of Mrs. Pandit, was appointed Prime
Minister of India in 1965, she became one of the first Heads of Government
for an Asian country, continuing the tradition of Sri Lanka’s Sirimavo R.
D. Bandaranaike, who became the first woman Prime Minister in 1960.
Similarly, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf became the first female leader of an
African nation when she won the 2005 Liberian presidential elections. Mrs.
Pandit and Ms. Brooks were trailblazers in women’s rights in their
respective countries, laying precedent for future generations of empowered
women in the civil and governmental services.

The General Assembly President, while not nearly as much of a public
figure as the UN Secretary-General, occupies a significantly different
leadership role. Sheikha Haya may have to preside over a transforming
Assembly-one that in recent years has been increasingly vociferous in
asking for a bigger say on how to reform the United Nations. After her
appointment, her first and most pressing task when the sixty-first
Assembly session opens in September is to help preside over the election
of the next Secretary-General. Seen at times simply as a “rubber stamp” on
ratifying Security Council decisions, the General Assembly has stressed
recently the need to play a bigger and more active role in the UN
decision-making process.

While many, including Secretary-General Kofi Annan, have applauded
Sheikha Haya’s appointment, hoping that she will propel forward a period
of heightened visibility for women in the United Nations, one must
understand the past to be able to help create a brighter future. Thus, the
personal voyages of Mrs. Pandit and Ms. Brooks, two unique luminaries in
UN diplomacy, is of utmost importance in comprehending the vital
contribution of women to the Organization. As Eleanor Roosevelt stated in
the 1946 declaration on the participation of women in the work of the
United Nations-“[women must] recognize that the goal of full participation
in the life and responsibilities of their countries and of the world
community is a common objective”-and nowhere is that more important than
in the United Nations.

Feminine Figure for Decolonization

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit, the younger sister of India’s first Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, grew up in a family steeped in politics and
firmly engaged in the struggle for independence. The second UN
Secretary-General, U Thant, summed up her lifelong achievements: “This
civilized and worldly woman, who achieved so many ‘firsts’-first woman
cabinet minister, first woman ambassador, first woman to head a United
Nations delegation-also became the first woman to preside the United
Nations General Assembly”. Prior to her work with the United Nations, Mrs.
Pandit was elected in 1937 as the Minister for Health and Local-Self
Government for the Indian state of Utter Pradesh. Already prominent within
the Indian Congress Party, she gained global attention when she
unofficially represented India in the first UN conference in 1945 in San
Francisco during the waning period of the Second World War. While an
official delegation from British India attended the ceremony, towing the
line of its colonizer, Mrs. Pandit radically spoke up regarding the
immediate independence for India in a speech to the 51 original UN Member
States. “The speech was a glorious oratorical success”, wrote Philip
Noel-Baker, renowned British diplomat, politician and 1959 Nobel Peace
laureate. “But it was much more. It convinced those delegates who had been
doubtful that, if India could produce such women, India could herself most
assuredly control her national affairs”, he added. “A great blow was
struck that morning for what President de Gaulle, a decade later, called
‘the necessary decolonization of the world”.1

Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit with Japanese Crown Prince Akihito and Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld in 1953 UN photo

After India gained independence, Mrs. Pandit rose quickly as a
diplomat, allowing her mixture of personal charisma and astute negotiation
skills to win over allies. The fact that her brother was the Prime
Minister gave her an additional degree of credibility, something that she
might have needed in an era where high-level female diplomats were few and
far between. She served as the ambassador to what many considered then and
now as the three most important political posts for India: Moscow, London,
and Washington. Thus, by the time she was a senior delegate to the United
Nations, Mrs. Pandit was well known and respected. She positioned herself
at the forefront of both the decolonization process and the non-aligned
movement. She raised attention to the inequality between the developed and
developing worlds, arguing that the United Nations should be used as a
bridge over the growing chasm between the two sides.

In her landmark 1945 speech in San Francisco, Mrs. Pandit underscored
the socio-economic and political divide between the colonizers and the
colonized, using rhetoric much akin to other decolonialists, such as
Frantz Fanon. According to Horace Alexander, a British pacifist thinker,
she “made it very clear that the time had come for the non-white majority
to be adequately and authentically represented in the counsels of the
world”.1 Mrs. Pandit was not afraid to place herself firmly within the
context of the North-South debate and spoke up vociferously for the rights
of Third World countries. She may be best remembered for her heated debate
on apartheid against Field-Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, the decorated
South African war hero who was at the creation of the original League of
Nations. In 1946, Mrs. Pandit led the Indian delegation in presenting to
the United Nations a resolution condemning the segregationist policies of
South Africa. K.P.S. Menon writes that “undaunted [by Smuts’ prestige],
Vijaya Lakshmi championed the Indian and Asian cause in South Africa with
clarity, vigour, emotion and occasional flashes of irony”. The resolution,
effectively pitting whites against non-whites, passed with only one vote
over the necessary two-thirds majority.

A lesser known fact about Mrs. Pandit is that prior to becoming General
Assembly President, she was almost appointed Secretary-General of the
United Nations. After Trygve Lie tendered his resignation in 1953, none of
the proposed replacements offered by the United States, the Soviet Union
and Denmark garnered the necessary number of Security Council votes. The
nominations by the two superpowers were understandably contentious, as
cold-war politics ensured that any candidate put forth by either of them
would need to be genuinely non-aligned. As such, neither the American nor
the Soviet nomination succeeded in receiving the necessary 7 out of 11
votes. The Danish nomination of Lester Pearson, who later became Canadian
President and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, garnered 9 votes, but with one
negative vote from a permanent Council member, he could not be appointed.
It is safe to assume that the veto came from the Soviet Union.

During a 19 March 1953 meeting, “the representative of the USSR
proposed the Council should recommend the appointment of Mrs. Vijaya
Lakshmi Pandit”. Hailing from a non-aligned country, she might have been
perceived as a balancing figure between the two superpowers. However, her
appointment again failed to receive the necessary number of votes, with a
remarkable 8 abstentions, with 2 in favour and 1 against. This may have
been due to the fact that she was a vociferous proponent of decolonization
in a period when most Third World States were still colonies and did not
have official representation in the United Nations. Her critical position
may have alienated many Western countries, with some fearing she was too
radical. Furthermore, the tacitly pro-Soviet foreign policy of Prime
Minister Nehru may have estranged those countries under the American
sphere of influence. Thus, Mrs. Pandit’s bid to be the first female
Secretary-General failed.

Mrs. Pandit’s career as a diplomat wound down by the 1960s. She
re-entered the world of politics, becoming the Governor of the Indian
state of Maharashtra and later winning a seat in the parliamentary lower
house, the Lok Sabha. Increasingly disenchanted and frustrated by the
corruption of politics and what she perceived as totalitarian tendencies
of Indira Gandhi, Mrs. Pandit resigned, retiring from political life. Her
increasingly critical view of her niece’s rule under the “emergency
period”, when Indira Gandhi suspended many civil liberties and
incarcerated opponents of her rule, led to an internal schism within the
Nehru family and the Congress Party as a whole. Nevertheless, Mrs. Pandit
will be remembered, as British diplomat Malcolm Macdonald put it, for her
“deep knowledge of international affairs, her remarkably wide diplomatic
experience and her fine mature wisdom, which, combined with her personal
grace, made her an outstanding ambassador”. Her last major post was as
India’s representative to the UN Human Rights Commission. Former United
States President Harry Truman, on the eve of her 70th birthday, summarized
much of the world’s opinion on the charismatic diplomat: “Madam Pandit
served with effectiveness and distinction the interest of not only her own
nation but the world community as well.” She passed away on 1 December
1990.

Empowering African Women

The world had to wait for 15 years for another woman to be appointed
President of the General Assembly. Angie E. Brooks’ tenure with the United
Nations was the culmination of a lifetime of hardship and hard work.
Unlike Mrs. Pandit, who was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, Ms.
Brooks was one of nine children of a “back-country minister of the African
Methodist Episcopal Zion Church”. She grew up in a foster home as her
parents were too poor to support her. After studying law through a tutor,
she was admitted to Shaw University in North Carolina. Unable to pay for
travelling expenses, she showcased the beginnings of her lifelong tenacity
by personally entreating the President of Liberia for funding. “In
Liberia, the President’s office is open to all … I kept plaguing
[President William V. S. Tubman]. I heard he likes to walk at six [a.m.],
so early one morning I went to see him.”2 Her repeated requests finally
paid off and she received the necessary funds to study in the United
States.

Angie Elisabeth Brooks, as Liberia’s representative in 1955, with S.M. Khan of Pakistan and Ishar Harari of Israel UN photo

After working with the Justice Department of Liberia, Ms. Brooks was
appointed in the delegation to the United Nations in 1954, just as Mrs.
Pandit’s tenure was ending. She continued serving for the next two
decades, culminating in her own appointment as the twenty-fourth General
Assembly President in 1969. Mrs. Brooks had an illustrious career with the
United Nations. In 1956, she served as Vice-Chairman of the Assembly’s
Fourth Committee, which monitored the state of colonial and
non-self-governing territories. Six years later, she became Chairman of
the United Nations Commission for Rwanda-Burundi, followed in 1964 with a
chairmanship in the UN visiting mission to the pre-independent Pacific
Islands. In 1965, she was Vice-President, and the following year
President, of the Trusteeship Council-the UN watchdog over its trust
territories. She was the first woman and the first African to serve in
this capacity.

In her opening speech as Assembly President, Ms. Brooks did not spare
the Organization her criticism: “The UN … has suffered a decline in
prestige in recent years because of its lack of dynamism. Our weakness …
seems to lie in the fact that we all too often view world affairs somewhat
parochially, as if they were being played out at the Headquarters on the
East River of New York. We have sometimes failed to realize that neither
oratory nor agreements between delegates, nor even resolutions or
recommendations, have had much impact on the course of affairs in the
world at large.” Mrs. Brooks’ legacy lay in her “mixture of feminine charm
and shrewd diplomacy”.2 She was adept at getting her point across without
much diplomatic sidestepping and was not averse giving her fellow
delegates a “straightforward” and “motherly” scolding. After representing
her country in the United Nations, she served as a Justice on Liberia’s
Supreme Court.

What the Future Holds

Why has the gap widened between the appointments of female General
Assembly presidents? After all, it seems incongruous that as more
countries open up their electoral systems to women voters the United
Nations continues to have very few women in its most august posts. We must
realize that the Assembly, much as all the other UN committees and
councils, is comprised of representatives from Member States and not from
the UN bureaucracy. Therefore, the responsibility of electing officials in
the General Assembly resides with national governments, as only their
representatives decide whom to elect as president.

According to Sydney Dawson Bailey, both unofficial rules and official
decrees are important in the selection process for General Assembly
president.3 “The chief criterion to be borne in mind in the selection of
officers should be personal competence”, but “the more heterogeneous the
membership of an assembly, the more the criterion of personal competence
in the selection of officers tends to give way to some system of rotation
or equitable distribution”. As the Assembly is undoubtedly the most
diverse and all-encompassing body in the UN system, this notion of
regional representation is particularly important. Mr. Bailey writes that
“the presidency has rotated from region to region with reasonable equity …
representatives of all geographical areas, except Eastern Europe, had
several times held in turn the office of President”. Similar to the de
facto tradition of regional rotation of the Assembly presidency, there is
a general consensus that there should be no candidate for the seat from
any of the five Security Council permanent members-this has continued to
this day.

A surprising aspect that must not be overlooked of the selection
process is the fact that no candidate is officially nominated by a country
and there is no official campaigning. Every country has an anonymous vote
that they can cast. Regional precedent, coupled with the lack of official
campaigns, means that the people running for the presidency seek to garner
votes in the unofficial backrooms and private conference halls of the
United Nations. And in order for a country to push for its representative
to be put into contention, its delegation has to convince its allies to
vote for its candidate. The rotation system allows for candidates, who aim
first and foremost to consolidate their region’s support, to come from
only a specific region every year. As Mr. Bailey notes, the movement away
from direct elections “did not, of course, get rid of the nominating
process: it transferred it from the floor of the Assembly to the
corridors. Moreover, it has been impossible to avoid nominations in
disguise”.

So how in this exceedingly complex process have women been left largely
out of the equation? As the Assembly presidency comes to each region every
five years or so, it may be the case that very few delegations have been
willing to go out on a limb and nominate a woman. As competition is fierce
within each region, campaigning for any individual that may raise
controversy is unadvisable. Thus, women within the General Assembly,
already at a disadvantage as very few female diplomats were part of the
original UN delegations, have been stuck in a quagmire in which their
representation within the United Nations has remained consistently low.
Both developing and developed nations have continued nominating mostly
male diplomats for the very important posts, unwilling to break out of the
status quo and jeopardize the chances of having its candidates
elected.

The United Nations stands at the crossroads of gender equality. As the
responsibility of electing women rests mainly on Member States, and not on
the UN bureaucracy itself, change will occur only when there is a
consensus to bring reform. One must hope that with Sheikha Haya’s
approaching term, a heightened visibility for women in the United Nations
will occur, continuing well past the end of her tenure. As Ms. Brooks
stated in her closing speech as Assembly President, “if much remains to be
done, new avenues to be explored, new attitudes and ideas to be found, we
have given the direction to future assemblies”. Let us hope that Sheikha
Haya’s tenure can set a precedent for future assemblies and that the world
will not have to wait for another 37 years for another woman President of
the General Assembly.

Notes

1 Mehta, Chandralekha et al. Sunlight Surround You. New
Delhi: Orient Longmans, 1970.

2 Crane, Louise. Ms. Africa: Profiles
of Modern African Women. Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1973.

3 Bailey,
Sydney Dawson. The General Assembly of the United Nations: A Study of
Procedure and Practice. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1978,
c.1964.