Challenges before new UN Secretary General

Mr. António Guterres was last week confirmed by the United Nations United Nations General Assembly to replace Ban Ki-Moon as Secretary General of the UN. Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal and former UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), will take over the UN top job in January 2017 when Mr. Ban’s second five-year […]

Mr. António Guterres was last week confirmed by the United Nations United Nations General Assembly to replace Ban Ki-Moon as Secretary General of the UN. Guterres, a former prime minister of Portugal and former UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), will take over the UN top job in January 2017 when Mr. Ban’s second five-year term expires. He had earlier been selected by the UN Security Council from a list of 14 candidates. The 193-member General Assembly had passed a resolution by consensus to officially approve the recommendation from the 15-member Security Council.
Born in Lisbon, Portugal in 1949, Guterres studied engineering and physics at the Instituto Superior Tecnico, graduated in 1971, became an academic and then joined the Socialist Party in 1974. In 1995, three years after being elected the Socialist Party’s secretary-general, he became prime minister, a position he held until 2002. Guterres, who is fluent in Portuguese, English, Spanish and French became the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees in 2005. As the refugee chief, Guterres persistently appealed to the conscience of the international community over the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. He vowed to carry on being a spokesman for the downtrodden if he became UN Secretary General.
Guterres thanked UN member states for electing him and addressed the General Assembly in English, French and Spanish, three of the UN’s six official languages. He promised to be a convener, mediator, bridge-builder and an honest broker in a crisis-ridden world.  Guterres will have a number of challenges to tackle. His first major diplomatic test will be to rally Russia and whoever emerges as the next United States President to address the carnage in Syria and other conflicts in South Sudan and Yemen, as well as North Korea’s nuclear brinkmanship. He will have to repair the UN’s reputation for peacekeeping, sullied by repeated accusations of sexual abuse, and show that the secretary general’s office can stand up to political pressure from rich and powerful countries.
Other challenges include implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs], climate change, continuing global refugee crisis, disarmament, curtailing armed conflicts in a number of countries and regions, and reducing tension between Russia and the West and between China and its East Asian neighbours. Guterres’ competent handling of the global refugee crisis was a critical factor in securing support for his candidacy from the Security Council’s five permanent members.
The fact that Guterres never directly challenged the nuclear weapons policies of the five permanent UN members, who are all nuclear-armed, during his term as premier of Portugal, may prompt many to ask whether he will now take a strong leadership role on this issue like Ban Ki-moon did.
As UN chief, Guterres would also have a strong mandate from the UN General Assembly and the majority of UN members to exercise leadership on climate change, better engagement with US Congress, reducing  unnecessary costs of numerous UN agencies as well as better education for the less privileged.
Guterres will soon find out as UNSG that solving problems that cross international borders requires coordinated action, and international organizations like the UN orchestrate a global response especially with the emergence of an online world. This poses tremendous opportunities for the UN to communicate directly to the world’s citizens. The UN needs to avoid becoming a global collections agency more so as the World Food Programme’s problems came about because many donor commitments were unfilled. These contributions are all voluntary, and countries can promise but not follow through on their aid pledges. In order to make progress, the UN needs to demonstrate to countries exactly how their individual contributions make a difference, and it needs to show the courage to single out those countries that are lagging.
How the new UN Secretary General will address a growing list of specific global challenges to an already daunting list of problems will determine whether the agency is still alive and kicking or the toothless bulldog that many believe it is.