The town hall debate this evening with the candidates running to be the tenth UN Secretary-General takes place as the Security Council prepares for the start of its straw poll process to determine who to recommend to the General Assembly. There are currently six candidates in the running and several more waiting in the wings, no doubt waiting to see the outcome of the initial rounds of the straw polling to decide whether to enter the race. There is, after all, no deadline for entering the race.
As we await the white smoke, there will be much speculation over what promises the various candidates make to the permanent members of the Security Council in order to avoid a veto. Backroom deals are an aspect of the selection process that has produced considerable angst from civil society, but—since they can’t be wished away—there isn’t much to be gained about whinging about them. It’s more productive to focus on what can be done under the circumstances to mitigate pressure tactics and to see whether there are any silver linings to allowing the permanent members of the Security Council influence over the selection of a handful of key leadership positions in the Secretariat.
Back in December, I outlined five predictions for the selection process:
The successful candidate will be a technocratic insider or someone who straddles the sovereigntist-internationalist divide amongst Member States.
Gender will be a handicap, but not an unsurmountable one.
Regional representation won’t matter, except in rhetoric.
The permanent members will impose conditions for supporting (or not vetoing) candidates.
The race will not be decided until late in the year.
I still think these predictions hold, though there is a slim possibility that the permanent members of the Security Council settle on a candidate early if they find the candidate equally unobjectionable and don’t think they will get a better deal if the process drags on. Much of this, however, hinges on what concessions they can get out of the candidates, such as control over key positions in the Secretariat and commitments regarding policy priorities.
This is nothing new, but—at a time of increased geopolitical competition when the permanent members have increasingly divergent views over the form and function of the UN system—pressure on candidates to make such concessions will undoubtedly be intense. A report published last month by the 1 for 8 Billion campaign titled Backroom Deals goes into great detail on the history of the trade in promises between member states and Secretary-General candidates. The report is definitely worth reading in full; the research that went into it is quite impressive, and it provides many examples of quid pro quo over individual appointments that add to what we already know about the ring-fencing of specific positions.1
Where the report falls short, however, are in its recommendations for ending the practice. My issue isn’t with the efficacy of the proposed measures in helping to strengthen the independence of the Secretary-General; it’s that the measures targeted at member states and on candidates for Secretary-General are dead on arrival because it is not in the interest of either set of stakeholders to implement these measures. As I’ve pointed out time and time again, recommendations are not useful unless they take into account both the interests of decision-makers and the parameters of decision-making processes.
To drive change and impact, we need to be clear-eyed about what we want to achieve and what we can do in the bounds of the world we live in. The permanent members of the Security Council will insist on getting what they see as “their” posts within the Secretariat. There are many positions that have been dominated by nationals of specific member states,2 but the most prominent ones are as follows:
France: Department of Peace Operations (since 1997)
China: Department of Economic and Social Affairs (since 2007)
United Kingdom: Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (since 2007)
United States: Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (since 2007)
Russia: Office of Counter-Terrorism (since 2017)
The workaround pursued by Secretaries-General to varying degrees of success in the past—to appoint someone of the relevant nationality but not the specific individual pushed by a member state—is unlikely to work this time around, as we can see with the ongoing saga at the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The United States—traditionally the largest donor to UNHCR—is threatening to withdraw from the agency over the appointment last month of Tresa Finerty as Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees, a position held by a succession of former U.S. government officials since 1999. Finerty is an American—just not the one that the Trump administration wanted.3 Simon Hankinson, the individual championed by the Trump administration, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
So what are some measures that candidates for Secretary-General can take?
There are several ways a candidate can square the circle of meeting the demands of the permanent members while maintaining the latitude required to effectively manage the Organization. They can, of course, try to negotiate to find a mutually acceptable candidate for the positions in question. Once in office, the successful candidate can also make sure that other senior posts across the Secretariat—including those of the deputies overseeing the day-to-day work of the departments in question—are filled by individuals who meet the highest standards of efficiency, competence, and integrity. The Secretary-General can also adjust the division of responsibilities among departments and between departments and the Executive Office of the Secretary-General.
More broadly, a Secretary-General can put in place or propose guardrails to limit the influence of individual member states, including prioritizing measures to increase the professionalization and independence of the international civil service through changes to human resources management policy and staff compensation arrangements, to limit the use (and crack down on the misuse) of gratis personnel, and to put in place guidelines on the acceptance of voluntary contributions to guard against hijacking of programs by donors away from intergovernmentally agreed mandates and priorities. These are measures that would be difficult for member states to oppose publicly, and even permanent members of the Security Council may see merit in having these guardrails if they can help limit the influence of their geopolitical rivals.
There may also be potential benefits to allowing the permanent members of the Security Council to have a stake in the selection of key leadership positions. After all, many political appointees are not necessarily subject matter experts in the areas they cover, and their views are not necessarily fixed. As noted in a recent report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Trump administration “has also shifted its attitudes toward certain bodies, as U.S officials have developed a more grounded understanding of the organizations they once treated primarily as symbols of globalist excess.”4 As such, it is possible for a savvy Secretary-General to leverage senior appointments in such a way that protects specific entities from potential cuts. A case in point was the appointment of David Beasley as Executive Director of the World Food Programme during the first Trump administration,5 which led not only to record fundraising numbers, but also netted WFP a Nobel Peace Prize.6
As distasteful as backroom deals may be, they have become an indelible part of the process. One of my longstanding concerns about campaigns by advocacy groups is the fact that they may do more harm than good given that they create unreasonable expectations for what is possible. This, in turn, undermines confidence in the UN when the organization is inevitably unable to achieve these unrealistic objectives.
Having ambitious objectives is important, but ideas for reform are worthless unless they are accompanied by a strategy for achieving those reforms that factors in the interests of decision-makers and the parameters for decision-making processes. And even in bad situations, it’s possible to find some silver linings.
© 2026 Eugene Chen under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations University.
No posts
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.