In Hindsight: The Search for the Next UN Secretary-General Begins
On 25 November, the presidents of the General Assembly and the Security Council issued a joint letter marking the start of the selection and appointment process of the next UN Secretary-General. The joint letter invites member states to present their candidates for the position while also setting out the modalities for submitting and considering nominations. (For more information, see our 25 November What’s in Blue story.)
Ten years ago, the selection process was transformed from an opaque, somewhat mysterious process, controlled by the five permanent members, to a more open, transparent one with active involvement of civil society and the General Assembly. Since 2017, a number of member states have pushed for further improvements to the transparency of the process and added refinements largely through the Ad Hoc Working Group on Revitalization of the work of the General Assembly and its resolutions, the latest of which is General Assembly resolution 79/327 of 5 September.
Drawing on Security Council Report’s coverage of the last selection and appointment process and our close monitoring of developments on this issue, this month’s In Hindsight provides a guide to the main steps of the process and the potential issues that may arise.
Nomination of Candidates
Now that the joint letter has been issued, member states are expected to begin formally nominating candidates.¹ The joint letter specifies that they are to do this through a letter to the presidents of the Security Council and the General Assembly, and that a vision statement and financial disclosure should be provided at the time of nomination. Vision statements for how candidates would address the UN’s most pressing questions were a novel feature in the 2015/2016 selection process. The need for candidates to disclose finances, however, is a new element that was included in resolution 79/327 and may help alleviate concerns that emerged in the last selection process that candidates with more resources may have had an unfair advantage. The joint letter also makes clear that member states may nominate only one candidate at a time and provides details for the withdrawal of candidates. This information was lacking in 2016 and led to some confusion when Bulgaria nominated a second candidate without withdrawing its earlier nominee.
Another new element in this selection process that derives from the 2016 experience is the request for candidates from the UN system to consider suspending their work during the campaign in order to avoid “any conflict of interest that may arise from their functions and adjacent advantages”. In 2016, there was a sense that candidates from within the UN could have access to information and resources not available to the other candidates and were able to advance their respective candidatures through attendance at UN meetings. It is not yet clear, though, if there will be adherence to this request, as there appear to be differing positions on the fairness of requiring a candidate to stop working during their campaign.
With a more open selection process, 2016 saw the largest field of candidates formally nominated; 13 altogether, with nine from Eastern Europe, the region laying claim to the position, and seven women, more than double the total number of women candidates who had ever been on the ballot. There is a strong sense once again that it is time for a woman Secretary-General, and the joint letter encourages member states to “strongly consider nominating women as candidates”. Although the joint letter notes “the importance of regional diversity in the selection of Secretaries-General” without identifying a specific geographic area, the Group of Latin American and Caribbean Countries (GRULAC) has been vigorously advocating for a Secretary-General from its region. Given the views expressed by many member states and civil society organisations in support of these positions, there is an expectation that a large number of women candidates will come from the GRULAC region.
Getting to Know the Candidates
Greater exposure to the candidates was an important aspect of the transparency of the process the last time round. It appears that this openness will be maintained with the presidents of the Council and the Assembly circulating the names of all the candidates to all member states and jointly maintaining and regularly updating a public list of candidates on a dedicated UN website.
There was an attempt by the ten elected members (E10) in negotiating the joint letter to include 1 April 2026 as the deadline for nominations while “allowing for exceptional circumstances”, but this was strongly resisted by the P5, who preferred to allow candidates to continue to come in throughout the process. It is therefore likely that, although the bulk of candidates will be nominated by the end of the first quarter of 2026, some may enter the race in the following months. This was the case in 2016 when nine of the 13 candidates had been nominated by the time the informal dialogues with the General Assembly began in April, but four candidates were nominated between May and September.
General Assembly
The most significant change to the selection process in 2016 was the participation of all the candidates in informal dialogue sessions, generally referred to as “hearings”, in the General Assembly. Hearings for the first nine candidates were held in April, and for the four later candidates shortly after they were nominated, in June, July, and October, respectively. Informal dialogues are expected to be held again in 2026 with the joint letter stating that “webcast interactive dialogues” will be offered to all candidates without prejudice to those that do not participate and that they can be held before the Council begins its selection by the end of July and may continue “throughout the process of selection”.
The transparency of the 2016 process starkly contrasts with prior selection processes for the Secretary-General, where there was no public record of who was being considered, and names were simply suggested, almost always by the permanent members. The General Assembly hearings provided an insight into member states’ expectations of the next Secretary-General, as well as an opportunity to assess the approach of each candidate to the challenges facing the UN.
If the General Assembly follows the same format as 2016, each informal dialogue will be two hours long, with the candidates given ten minutes to present their vision statement, followed by questions from member states. Candidates also answered three to four recorded pre-selected questions from civil society.
There may be pressure to refine this process in 2026. Among the criticisms were the lack of time to answer questions and the repetitive nature of the questions. Members may be looking to pose more focused questions to better explore the candidate’s ability to perform under pressure and manage competing priorities. There was also some unhappiness from civil society organisations about the limited number of questions they were permitted, and these groups are likely to push for more time during the hearings or other opportunities to question the candidates.
In 2016, there was a Global Town Hall meeting organised by the President of the General Assembly (PGA) in July and broadcast live on Al Jazeera TV, in which ten of the then-12 candidates participated. The joint letter does not include any reference to such a meeting, and it is unclear whether a similar type of event will be held this time. Some members may be looking for less public formats, which might allow them to assess the candidates away from the spotlight.
Security Council
If the timeline of the 2016 process is followed, the next step for the Council will be to decide on the timing and modalities for meeting the candidates. At the start of the 2016 process, Council members were not planning to meet the candidates. However, by May 2016, the first round of informal dialogues had taken place, and several candidates had asked for meetings. This led to Council members meeting separately with all 13 candidates. The meetings were held with each candidate in the permanent missions of the Council president for the month and lasted an hour.
While it is difficult to determine the exact impact on the selection process, the interaction with candidates was seen to have contributed to shaping Council members’ positions on the candidates. The joint letter indicates that candidates will be offered the opportunity to meet with members of the Council. However, Council members will have to decide if they want to use the same format for these meetings and assess how to make the best use of their time with the candidates.
The Security Council’s Straw Polls
Following the meetings with the candidates, the Council will most likely move to the conduct of straw polls, which have been used as a means of testing the viability of candidates since 1981. This innovation was born of a need to break the deadlock between Kurt Waldheim (Austria) and Salim Ahmed Salim (Tanzania). Colour-coded ballots differentiating between permanent members and elected members were first used in 1991 and have since been used in every selection process. Until 2006, the straw polls had two options, i.e. either “encourage” or “discourage”. In 2006, the option of “no opinion” was added. The 2016 straw polls retained all three options with members either “encouraging”, “discouraging” or expressing “no opinion”. Between 21 July and 5 October 2016, six straw polls were held. The first five were undifferentiated with permanent and elected members using identical ballot papers, while the final one was colour-coded, where permanent members were given red ballot papers and elected members white ones.
There appears to be general acceptance of the straw polls among Council members. Council members will need to decide, however, on the appropriate start date and when to move to colour-coded ballots. Both issues are likely to be key points of contention, as they were in the 2016 process. If there is a particularly high number of candidates, shortlisting through eliminating those that are underperforming in the polls may come up for discussion. In 2016, only four of the 13 candidates dropped out of the selection process following low scores in the polls.
An issue that has arisen in the past, and is likely to come up again, is the balance between increasing the transparency of the straw poll system and maintaining the confidentiality of the results. In order to maintain confidentiality, in 2016, members agreed ahead of the straw polls not to announce the results. Following each vote, the Council president simply informed the President of the General Assembly and the press that the polls had been conducted without revealing the results. The Council president then informed each of the permanent representatives of nominating member states of the votes received by their candidate, as well as the highest and lowest numbers of encouraged and discouraged among candidates, without revealing which candidates received these numbers. In 2016, the Council faced criticism from civil society and the wider UN membership for this lack of transparency in its communication of the results of the straw polls. Given that due to leaks after each straw poll, the full results were promptly published in the media, some members argued that it would be better for the Council to be the one to provide the results.
Since then, there has been an ongoing debate among the wider membership about the need for greater openness in the selection and appointment process, particularly with regard to the results of the straw polls. This sort of transparency would ensure that accurate numbers are used in analysis of the results and retained as an official record for future reference. This has, however, been a divisive issue both in the negotiations on resolution 79/327 and the joint letter. Members will need to decide if the results should be made public, and if so, how this can be done in a way that is respectful to the candidates.
Over the years, there have been attempts to provide written guidelines on the selection process through non-papers. Ambassador Nugroho Wisnumurti (Indonesia), during the process that led to the appointment of Kofi Annan, submitted a set of guidelines on the straw polls during his term as President of the Council in November 1996. These informal guidelines, which came to be known as the Wisnumurti Guidelines, were again used in 2006, together with a fact sheet produced by France in the process that led to the appointment of Ban Ki-moon. In the process leading to Secretary General António Guterres’ appointment, a series of non-papers were produced including one on informal guidelines for the process by Egypt, Council president in May 2016, and Spain; a paper on the procedure for straw polls circulated by Russia in May 2016; and a paper on the procedure, which included an annex on the practice related to straw polls authored by France in June 2016. Ambassador Koro Bessho (Japan), who was the Council president at the start of the straw polls in July 2016, transmitted on 1 February 2017 a note written in his personal capacity on the selection process to the presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council.
The Recommendation
Since 1991, the use of colour-coded ballots has given Council members a clear indication of whether there was a candidate who would receive nine affirmative votes, with no negative vote from a permanent member. In 2016, this point was reached after the first and only colour-coded straw poll held on 6 October. Of the remaining nine candidates, only one candidate, António Guterres, emerged as the candidate with more than nine “encourage” and no “discourage” votes. At this point, the Council convened a private meeting to adopt a resolution recommending Guterres by acclamation. This was the same process used for Kofi Annan (1996) and Ban Ki-moon (2006).
Some of the wider membership have suggested that the Council should recommend more than one candidate to the General Assembly. Article 97 of the UN Charter states that: “The Secretary-General shall be appointed by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.” Some argue that it would be contrary to Article 97 for the Council to do this, while others suggest that, given that Article 97 does not make clear what is meant by “recommendation”, the Charter is open to the Council proffering either one or multiple candidates. While this is unlikely to be acceptable to the permanent members of the Council, it may be raised if there are a number of suitable candidates.
The Appointment
Following a recommendation from the Security Council, the process moves to the General Assembly. Rule 141 of the General Assembly’s Rules of Procedure stipulates that when the Council has submitted its recommendation on the appointment of the Secretary-General, the General Assembly shall consider the recommendation and vote upon it in a private meeting. In practice, the General Assembly has never held the vote in a private meeting, and almost all appointment resolutions have been adopted by acclamation.
In 2016, there was an attempt to appoint facilitators to consult with states on the substance of the appointment resolution, but some states raised concerns that this could be a divisive process. Some members are keen for the General Assembly to play a more active role, including through the possibility of its own straw polls, an idea that was included in the initial draft of resolution 79/327 but faced opposition from some members.
Conclusion
The Security Council and General Assembly are about to embark on a journey that will culminate in a decision that will shape the future of the UN at a time of major change to the organisation and the global order. Slovenia, as Council president in December, has chosen to organise an open debate on “Leadership for Peace” which will provide members with an opportunity to focus on the qualities needed for the next Secretary-General to navigate today’s global challenges and lead the UN into the future. The selection of the Secretary-General will most likely be one of the most consequential decisions the world body makes in the upcoming year.
¹ On 26 November, the Argentine Republic presented the nomination of Rafael Mariano Grossi as candidate for the position of Secretary-General in a letter to the presidents of the Security Council and General Assembly.
