When the United Nations last appointed its Emergency Relief Coordinator in 2021, New York was abuzz with rumours with dozens of names circulating. This time around, things are much quieter: either the Secretary-General is struggling to find candidates for the role, or he’s happy with the names he has received that the search has not intensified.
Formally, all we know is that the deadline for applications is May 20. Informally, although unconfirmed, we have heard rumours that the choice may boil down to two options: Sigrid Kaag – the former Dutch and EU politician and current UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza – or a British politician (see below).
Kaag is a respected diplomat and humanitarian official who is already engaged in OCHA’s most pressing crisis, coordinating aid into the Palestinian enclave. Her appointment would also end the unjustifiable UK monopoly over the emergency relief chief role, albeit continue the pattern whereby work that primarily affects the global south is overseen by someone from the global north. The one possible question some people we spoke to noted is the potential ill feeling within OCHA towards Kaag regarding interagency disagreements over the Gaza crisis.
Those we spoke to were much more concerned, however, about a UK appointee. It is widely expected that the current British government will lose power in the next few months, with opinion polls suggesting that many current and former ministers could find themselves out of work. This possibility, combined with the UK’s bad habit of trying to palm off controversial ex-politicians on the UN has led many to worry that an unqualified candidate might be nominated.
And the UK appears to be insisting on its right to recommend a Brit. Development and Deputy Foreign Minister Andrew Mitchell recently flew to New York to meet the Secretary-General, and it has been suggested that the meeting was used to advance the case for a British appointee. One name in the frame: Mitchell himself!
Compared with some of his colleagues, Mitchell is at least an experienced senior Development Minister of long standing with an international profile and a background as a UN peacekeeper. But if he is in the frame, or if he is lobbying for one of his fellow nationals, that would be curious given that Mitchell himself has previously co-led campaigns calling for the end of the UK monopoly on the role.
That campaign, this time without Mitchell’s support, is running with full force again. UNA-UK – part of the Blue Smoke coalition – worked with the Foundation for Global Governance and Sustainability (FOGGS) to send the Secretary-General an open letter from over 60 former senior UN officials, humanitarian experts and civil society leaders calling to end the UK monopoly. Blue Smoke have also released some cheeky social media shareable pictures drawing attention to the UK’s stranglehold on the role.
What’s up?
Miguel de Serpa Soares is soon standing down as Under-Secretary-General for Legal Affairs and UN Legal Counsel. We’ve received confirmation that he’ll be returning to Europe and that the vacancy has been listed on the UN’s site. He told PassBlue that the time had come for him to move on. Appointed by Ban Ki-moon in September 2013, de Serpa Soares was by some distance the longest-serving member of the Secretary-General’s Senior Management Group (SMG).
For a long while he was also the Secretary-General’s only fellow Portuguese national in that group, until Jorge Moreira da Silva was appointed Executive Director of the UN Office for Project Services. De Serpa Soares’s retirement leaves Atul Khare, Under-Secretary-General for Operational Support (DOS), as the longest-serving member of the SMG and the only person to have been appointed prior to Guterres’s taking over. We have yet to hear who might be in the running to replace de Serpa Soares, but more information may emerge as the 10 June deadline for applications approaches.
Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim was elected Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. She is President of the Association for Indigenous Women and Peoples of Chad and co-chair of the International Indigenous Peoples’ Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC).
Eyebrows were raised over the departure of Catriona Laing as Special Representative for Somalia and Head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Somalia (UNSOM) after less than a year and with no permanent replacement lined up (James Swan, who was SRSG before Laing and then became Laing’s Deputy SRSG, takes over as Acting Special Representative). This is a very tough time for UNSOM, with the Somali government calling for the termination of the mission and the country on the verge of a humanitarian crisis. Clearly the next SRSG will need to be a skilled diplomat and a capable leader in humanitarian affairs. Three of the last five SRSGs have been from the UK (perhaps connected to the UK’s financial and peacekeeping commitments to the mission, which the UK’s most recent strategic plan pledged to increase). As for the job of heading up OCHA, what are the odds that the best candidate will yet again happen to be British? What are the odds they both will?
We understand the UN Civil Society Conference in Nairobi last week was teeming with whispers around the appointment of an inaugural Envoy for Future Generations. Civil society is hopeful that this Envoy will shepherd and promote action around the upcoming Declaration on Future Generations, a key outcome expected from the UN’s Summit of the Future in September. It’s understood the Secretary-General does not have a preferred candidate yet nor even a shortlist; names are floating about but none seem to have organized a serious campaign. Clarification on the expected timeframe and specification of the appointment are welcome. Watch this space: If you have any information, get in touch with us.
There is a new draft of the UN Pact for the Future, which we reported on previously (PassBlue also obtained the intergovernmental input for the pact regarding “early reform of the Security Council.”) The newest version of the pact is, of necessity, far shorter: 147 paragraphs cut to 63. Regrettably, one aspect that has been lost is any mention of reforming how the UN selects its senior appointees. The drafters perhaps accepted the dubious logic apparently advanced by the UK and others that this would repeat work being done elsewhere in the UN system (pretty much everything in the pact repeats work being done elsewhere in the UN system). However, the pact retains a strong paragraph on improving the selection process for the Secretary-General post: “guided by the principles of merit, transparency, inclusiveness and regional rotation” and regretting that there has never been a woman Secretary-General.
The “regional rotation” line for selection of the UN leader may be controversial, as many states had been pushing for a line on greater regional diversity to compensate for the historical overrepresentation of Europeans in the role, but strict rotation would be too constraining and could give the two European groups 40 percent of future appointments and therefore hold back the best candidates, as their groups’ “turn” would come up only once every 50 years. There is also the question of whose turn is next: The Latin American-Caribbean bloc hasn’t had a Secretary-General since 1991, but the Eastern European Group has never had one (albeit they only represent five percent of the world’s population).
Coming up
The next President of the General Assembly (PGA) will be elected on June 6. Nobody is expecting a contest as it is the turn of the African Group to select a candidate, and the African Union agreed at an early stage to support the candidate of Cameroon. It was initially expected that would mean Michel Tommo Monthe, who has been Cameroon’s Permanent Representative in New York for some 16 years, but it quickly became apparent that Monthe would be replaced – as both Perm Rep and PGA – by Philémon Yang. Yang, 76, was the longest-serving Prime Minister in Cameroon’s history, and he comes from Cameroon’s Anglophone community, many of whom have endured widespread war crimes in the country’s ongoing civil war. He has released a detailed vision statement outlining his plans for the role. He will be the 79th PGA and the 75th man to hold that post.
Five nonpermanent members of the UN Security Council will also be elected in June. The elections should be a snooze – Denmark, Greece, Pakistan, Panama, and Somalia will be elected unopposed. There was almost a contest for the African seat, with Mauritius having previously thrown their hat into the ring and Djibouti threatening to do so, but ultimately neither country decided to stand against Somalia.
The next Secretary-General must be 1 for 8 billion
In 2016, the 1 for 7 Billion campaign transformed the process used to select the next UN Secretary-General, bringing unprecedented transparency into the smoke-filled rooms in which the world’s top civil servant was chosen. Next year, the campaign to succeed António Guterres will begin in earnest, and what is now the 1 for 8 Billion campaign is ramping up to hold that process to account. A new, more representative Steering Committee has been formed, consisting of four organisations: CIVICUS, Plataforma CIPÓ, Southern Voice and WomanSG; and the organisation’s principles have been updated, particularly to incorporate the clear international consensus that the next Secretary-General must be a woman. The campaign and its independent secretariat will formally relaunch in September. Until then we at Blue Smoke are acting as its incubator and host.
1 for 8 Billion is building and strengthening its coalition, so if you or your organisation would like to be involved click here to see what’s required.
Tips
Do you know something more about who is in the running for any of these posts? Or information about another upcoming appointment? Reach out to us in total confidence at hello@bluesmoke.blog. Any information you give us will only be used on the terms you set.
Endorse:
• Do you work for an NGO that might like to endorse the Blue Smoke principles? Email us at hello@bluesmoke.blog
Blue Smoke 