The Next UN Secretary-General Must Be a Woman & a Feminist

By Natalie Samarasinghe

September 19, 2024 – Friday marks the launching of the 1 for 8 Billion campaign for a fair and inclusive process to select the next United Nations secretary-general in 2026. As the UN prepares to hold the Summit of the Future on Sunday, our campaign wants to ensure that we find the best person to implement what member states agree on at the summit; make progress where they don’t; and deliver a better future for the world’s eight billion people.

Ten years ago, I co-founded the previous incarnation of the campaign. At the time, the UN had virtually no established rules for making this crucial appointment. It was governed by a brief reference in the UN Charter stating that the appointment is made by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council and on a resolution passed in 1946 recommending that the Council put forward just one candidate.

As a result, the Council’s five permanent members, Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States (P5), maintained an iron grip on the procedure for decades. There was no timeline, criteria or formal shortlist of candidates. Even elected members of the Council were often left in the dark while the P5 sought concessions from hopeful candidates.

We helped to change that. Working closely with member states, UN officials and civil society partners, we secured a process that gave the whole UN membership — and the wider public — a chance to hear from candidates and called on states to nominate women for the post (more than half of the candidates in 2016 were women, a major increase over previous decades).

We didn’t win on all fronts. The UN’s glass ceiling remains stubbornly intact. Civil society participation in the formal process was tokenism. But having a formal shortlist meant we could engage with candidates and scrutinize their records. Greater transparency also pressured the P5 somewhat.

A decade on, I have no illusions that these veto holders remain central to the process, or that the progress we made 10 years ago is secure. And I no longer believe it is enough for the next secretary-general to be a feminist. After 80 years of men, it must be a woman.

Over one billion people have been born since we last launched our campaign, and our global problems seem to have multiplied by a similar factor. Back then, we fretted about polarization, but governments still adopted the Paris climate agreement and Sustainable Development Goals. Today, we have breached the 1.5 degree target set at Paris in 13 of the last 14 months, and 84 percent of the goals are off track.

Even back then, Russia under Putin invaded Crimea; Israel under Netanyahu launched another assault on Gaza; and the Security Council declared Sudan’s food crisis the worst in the world. Ten years later, Ukrainian, Palestinian and Sudanese people are suffering worse deprivations, while the number of state-based conflicts is at its highest since 1946.

Back then, the damage wrought by misogyny and racism was no weaker than it is today. But the hypocrisy seems blatantly worse, with so many broken promises — on vaccines, debt and financing — in quick succession. And double standards, on atrocities, refugees and arms sales, are on show in real time.

No secretary-general can hope to fix all these problems, especially relying on a woefully overstretched and underfunded organization. But the appointment still matters.

Today, it is even more important that we see the General Assembly reasserting its role, whether on peace and security matters or on selecting the world’s diplomat-in-chief. The P5 will remain divided on clearcut violations and happy to unite around lowest-common-denominator outcomes when it suits them.

Yet, the next UN leader cannot be beholden to the P5; she will need to work with a much wider set of actors who must — and are — stepping into the breach, from countries such as Qatar and South Africa to regional organizations.

Today, it is even more important that the selection process makes waves beyond Turtle Bay. From climate change to AI, the UN is likely to be a supporting actor going forward: forging partnerships across sectors, connecting forums such as the G20 and international financial institutions and shifting power to those on the ground. The next secretary-general will need to move among these worlds.

Today, it is even more important we secure the first Madame Secretary-General. Last time, our campaign hesitated to call for a woman. As we questioned regions’ claims that it was “their turn” (a practice of rotation that has never been established officially), we felt we could not make a similar argument for women. We were wrong.

The UN’s symbolic value, moral authority and normative power remain its greatest assets. We need a secretary-general who reflects the future we want and a decisive break from the historical injustices that continue to afflict the organization. States cannot be content with nominating women; they must appoint one and be willing to push back if the Security Council picks another man.

Finally, it is vital that the first woman secretary-general be willing and able to be feminist. Willing because too many women are ready to sacrifice their principles for power and use their gender as a fig leaf for their actions and privilege. Able because many more women in the political sphere are punished simply for being there, let alone for pursuing a feminist agenda.

Over the next two years, as the selection process gears up, we must find ways to build political cover, support and space for feminist candidates and positions, so that whoever is appointed has the power to be the secretary-general the world so desperately needs.

WUNRN

The Next UN Secretary-General Must Be a Woman and a Feminist – PassBlue