The UN Opens Up

I went to the UN Debate on Tuesday night, an unprecedented live broadcast on Al Jazeera with ten of the twelve candidates for Secretary General of the United Nations taking part. Two of the anchors from Al Jazeera probed the candidates and took questions from UN delegates on the floor of the General Assembly. Here are my observations from the evening:

1. The former prime ministers, Antonio Guterres of Portugal and Helen Clark of New Zealand, plus former UN Climate Change director Christiana Figueres of Costa Rica, were the most skilled presenters. They were engaging, passionate and had memorable lines. Clark literally asked to be elected, saying that she was “ready to put her heart and soul into the job.”

2. There was a definite commitment to reform of the UN. I had no idea that it takes as long as 18 months to hire a new person. Gender parity in management is a necessity. Even a change in the composition of the Security Council structure was proposed, with the comment: “You know it is not 1945 anymore.” As for the traditional geographic rotation of the Secretary General, with it now being the turn of Eastern Europe, Clark said, “We need this to be a search for the best talent.”

3. There was subtle disagreement about the peacekeeping mission of the UN. The candidates from the former Yugoslavia, including Vuk Jeremi? of Serbia and Igor Luk?i? of Montenegro, were eloquent about the need for UN peacekeepers, often referred to as the Blue Helmets or Blue Berets, to start serving as game changers in preventing genocide in places such as South Sudan. Others took the position that the role is to protect, not to fight. There are currently over 100,000 Blue Helmets on duty around the world.

4. The Sustainable Development Goals, which have served as an aspirational guidepost for NGOs and businesses alike, were missing in action. In fact, only one of the candidates, Guterres, spoke about climate change and he did so in the context of needing to get public opinion behind a change agenda.

5. The central role played by public communications, particularly through social media, was cited by Guterres. “We have to translate our big initiatives into language that everybody understands. You need public opinion as a close ally, to prove that climate change is an immediate threat because of the change in sea level, to make people see the effects of their behavior.” He also noted the challenge in the lack of media coverage of effective peacekeeping and peacebuilding. “There are no TV cameras where prevention is being done effectively.”

6. The role of the UN in threading the needle between national purview and global needs was brilliantly expressed by Figueres. She said that she had run the climate process which culminated in the unanimous agreement in Paris on the basis of “recognizing national needs and common ground.” She made a similar point about the accountability of the peacekeepers. “There will be zero tolerance for sexual abuse. Immunity cannot be implied as impunity. Perpetrators will be held to account.”

7. On the world’s hot spots, including Syria, Israel/Palestine and South Sudan, there was consensus for the need for a Secretary General who leads from the front. “Leadership is essentially substance. The Secretary General must be a solid ethical reference as well. You cannot win only with communication,” said Guterres.

8. The Argentine Foreign Minister, Susana Malcorra, one of the candidates, had the most realistic assessment of what is possible as Secretary General. She had a list of ten tasks that she would aim to achieve in the role including conflict prevention.

The selection of the new Secretary General will take place in the next six weeks. The problems of the world, from immigration to populism to income inequality to sustainability to peacekeeping, require a well-functioning supranational body. As delegates consider their options, it might be wise to consider the words of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln in his annual message to Congress early in 1862. “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew… the fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.”