In Dakar, staff members from UN Women Senegal and other UN agencies attend a presentation on sexual harassment in the workplace, part of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, 2016.

By Dulcie Leimbach
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 4 2019 (IPS)

As multilateralism takes a beating from President Trump amid the “new world disorder,” as one European diplomat put it, three women who know the United Nations inside and out through previous top leadership jobs have originated a Group of Women Leaders for Change and Inclusion.

The goal is to bring together former UN female colleagues who held top jobs as well to “partner and raise our voices on matters regarding women equality and multilateralism,” said Susana Malcorra, one of the three women who started the group.

“By now we are more than 25 and keep adding.”

The other two former UN leaders behind it are Helen Clark, who ran the UN Development Program from 2009 to 2017 and was the prime minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008; and Irina Bokova, a Bulgarian politician who was the director-general of Unesco from 2009 to 2017.

Dulcie Leimbach

Malcorra, an Argentine, was the chief of cabinet for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon from 2012 to 2015 and previously led the UN Department of Field Support.

She left the UN to become foreign minister of her country under President Mauricio Macri. She left that post in 2017 to move to Madrid to be near her family, she said.

All three women were candidates in 2016 for UN secretary-general, to succeed Ban, a South Korean.

Of 13 candidates, seven were women. António Guterres, who ran the UN Refugee Agency for 10 years and was a prime minister of Portugal, was selected by the UN Security Council for a five-year term beginning Jan. 1, 2017.

No woman has ever headed the UN.

The three women are now affiliated with different academia, think tanks and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The idea for the initiative, which has no outside financing yet, came from a conversation among the women, Malcorra said, at last fall’s annual General Assembly open debate. It took shape in November and December, when the “scouting” process began.

“We felt that, as candidates to become SG” — secretary-general — “it would be very powerful to launch this together.”

The trio are introducing the group as the International Women’s Day approaches, on March 8, and the yearly UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) kicks off for 11 days on March 11.

They will use their personal Twitter handles to promote the group and these hashtags: #WomenLeadersForPositiveChange; #WomenForMultilateralism; and #WomenLeadersForInclusiveChange.

The timing of the group’s debut coincides as other international efforts to reinforce multilateralism — the policy of countries working jointly to solve global problems — include France and Germany partnering for the first time as rotating presidents of the UN Security Council for March and April, respectively.

The launching also occurs as France and Germany work jointly to keep Europe unified while Britain exits from the European Union and some politicians elsewhere in Europe — such as in Hungary and Italy — seem intent on fragmenting the continent further.

This is a “loosely connected” network of women, former colleagues and friends, Malcorra said of the new group, “who share some serious concerns about the state of the world, the multilateral institutions and, particularly, about a trend to pushback policies regarding gender parity and women empowerment. The signs we see are very worrisome in this regard.”

The group has written an open, two-page letter, which begins: “We join our voices as women colleagues who have worked in governments and in multilateral organizations in support of promoting humanitarian relief, advocating for human rights principles and normative policies, advancing sustainable development, and resolving some of the world’s most complex conflicts.

“We ourselves have leveraged multilateralism in order to drive positive change for peoples and our planet. Now we collectively call attention to the need to achieve full gender equality and empowerment of women across all ambits of society and the critical importance of multilateralism as a vehicle in support of that.”

The space that women leaders now collectively occupy, the letter warned, was “not opened up easily and can never be taken for granted.”

It is signed by, among others, Sahle-Work Zewde, the president of Ethiopia who served as UN envoy to the African Union; Baroness Valerie Amos, a Briton who ran the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; Ertharin Cousin, an American who directed the World Food Program; Louise Fréchette, a Canadian diplomat who was a UN deputy secretary-general; Navi Pillay, a South African judge who was most recently the UN’s high commissioner for human rights; Mary Robinson, an ex-president of Ireland and former UN high commissioner for human rights; Zainab Bangura, a politician from Sierra Leone who was the UN’s envoy on sexual violence in conflict; and Radhika Coomaraswamy, a Sri Lankan who served as a UN envoy for children and armed conflict.

What can women bring to multilateralism that is different from what men can offer?

“What women always bring to the table: a different and enriching perspective,” Malcorra said. “But multilateralism is also key to the advancement of policy discussions about gender as the Beijing Conference [on women in 1995] proved. CSW is not moving as envisioned and we must keep pushing.”

The initiative, Malcorra added, will not finish in March. “We expect to continue until UNGA” — the annual UN General Assembly opening debate, in the fall.

*Previously, Dulcie Leimbach was an editor for the Coalition for the UN Convention Against Corruption; from 2008 to 2011, she was the publications director of the United Nations Association (UNA) of the USA, where she edited its flagship magazine, The InterDependent, and migrated it online in 2010. She was also the senior editor of UNA’s annual book, “A Global Agenda: Issues Before the UN.” She has also worked as an editorial consultant to various UN agencies. Before UNA, Leimbach was an editor at The New York Times for more than 20 years, editing and writing for most sections of the paper, including the Magazine, Book Review and Op-Ed.

Excerpt:

In one of her last public appearances as president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet visits Lo Prado, a community in Santiago, the capital, on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2018. Her advice to women and girls who want to lead an exemplary life in our chaotic times? Don’t try to be perfect.

By Dulcie Leimbach
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 4 2018 (IPS)

Michelle Bachelet ended her second term as president of Chile on March 11, 2018. Her first term, from 2006 to 2010, was marked by an ambitious social and economic agenda advancing women’s rights and better health care. Her cabinet of ministers, for example, was composed of an equal number of men and women, as she vowed to do during her campaign.

During her second presidency, Bachelet, 66, aimed higher in reducing inequalities but met more resistance. Nevertheless, her achievements included free education at the university level, especially for poor students; creating a Ministry of Women and Gender Equality; and decriminalizing abortion.

Her tax-reform measures helped subsidize her social reforms, although some experts contend that higher taxes on the rich and corporations have stifled the economy.

Bachelet’s history of being imprisoned and tortured in Chile is well known. In 1973, her father, Brig. Gen. Alberto Bachelet Martínez, was locked up and tortured after the Sept. 11 coup ousting President Salvador Allende, aided and abetted by the CIA.

Her father died in prison from a heart attack in 1974; soon after, Bachelet and her mother, Ángela Margarita Jeria Gómez, a famous archeologist, were imprisoned and tortured by the Pinochet regime.

Bachelet and her mother sought and won exile first in Australia and then moved to East Germany, where Bachelet worked on her medical degree, married and had her first child.

She and her family returned to Chile in 1979, where she delved into politics a few years later (and separated from her husband). When she first ran for president, she was a single mother of three children.

That’s not all: besides being a pediatrician, Bachelet is a military specialist, having served as the country’s health minister and then defense minister before winning the presidency in 2006.

Bachelet, who between her presidencies was the first executive director of UN Women, is said to be a shortlisted candidate for the next United Nations high commissioner for human rights, though she would not confirm that status.

In an email interview with Bachelet, who has been traveling since March from Chile to Washington, D.C., to Geneva, India and back to Chile, she answered questions about her immediate post-presidential life, which appears to be just as active — if equally public — as her job running one of South America’s most democratic countries.

When Bachelet left office, she was the last female president standing in the continent.

In the interview, she touches on her new role in the World Health Organization; how her role as the first female defense minister of Chile, from 2002 to 2004, enabled her to garner the respect from that sector that she needed to run the country; how her mother has supported her emotionally throughout her life; what advice Bachelet gives to girls and women in our chaotic times; and whether she prays (she is an agnostic, she answered). — DULCIE LEIMBACH

Q. You’ve just become a private citizen after your recent four-year presidential term ended in mid-March; how does that feel and what is a routine day for you now? Are you based in Santiago, Chile’s capital?

MICHELLE BACHELET: I’ve enjoyed going back to my everyday life! However, I haven’t stayed home resting. I’m based in Santiago, I moved back to my house — I lived in another house during my Presidency — and I’ve also been busy opening up my new foundation, which will serve as a space for dialogue and political reflection, without partisan divisions, and that will take on the challenge of articulating a common project with civil society.

Q: Tell us about your new role as co-chair of the High-Level Steering Group for Every Woman Every Child and chairman of the board of the World Health Organization’s Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health? What do women and girls need the most globally, health-wise? And what is your strategy for attaining these needs? Will it require politicking?

BACHELET: I am very excited about [my] new role in the Partnership for Maternal, Newborn and Child Health. I’ve been working on this issue since the mid-1990s at a national level, and hopefully, will continue to contribute in an international sphere.

The health inequities that prevail all around the world, particularly among women and girls, are not only unjust, they also threaten the advances we have made in the last decades, and they endanger economic growth and social development.

I believe that each country needs to develop an integrated health program for women and girls, strengthening components of the United Nations’ global strategy [Sustainable Development Goals] in early childhood development; the health and well-being of adolescents; the improvement in quality, equity and dignity in health services; and sexual and reproductive rights as a way to empower women and girls worldwide and without leaving anyone behind.

The global strategy establishes ambitious but achievable goals, and I look forward to discussing with states and stakeholders about the required actions needed to ensure that people realize their right to the highest attainable standard of health.

Q. Do you think it helped in your two presidencies that you had been a defense minister of Chile, that you had the trust of the military, especially since you are a woman?

BACHELET: Yes, of course. My family has always been linked to the military world. My father was a general in Chile’s air force and I studied defense issues, focusing on military strategy and Continental defense.

When I was appointed the first woman to occupy the position of Minister of Defense in Chile and in Latin America, my academic and military background was considered an asset and that led to very good relationships with this institution during my time as Minister and during my Presidency.

Q. How did you navigate barriers to your ambitious social and economic agenda in your second term as president of Chile? What personal trait or support did you rely on to deal with barriers in your way?

BACHELET: Since the return of democracy in 1990, Chile has experienced sustained economic growth at an annual average of 5 percent, and became the first South American country to join the OECD [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development]. However, this strong growth has not meant the end of inequality in access to health or education.

That is why, when I returned in 2013 to run for my second term, I was determined to carry out the kind of social, economic and political reforms that I believed were necessary to make people’s lives better. In order to do that, we have risked political capital and I believe it was worth it, because we had the courage to put Chile in motion, and with it, we have seen Chile change.

Q. Your mother, Ángela Margarita Jeria Gómez, an archeologist, reportedly lives with you; how has her presence helped you as president? Did she keep your spirits up in such a demanding, round-the-clock role?

BACHELET: Although I am very close with my mother, at 91 years old, she continues to be very independent and does not live with me! She is an inspiring, strong, dignified and resilient companion, but also a very affectionate and supportive presence, especially during the harder parts of being president. I am thankful for her companionship me during these past years.

Q. Chile is a predominately Catholic country; do you practice that religion? Do you use your faith to manage your life and the political obstacles? Do you pray?

BACHELET: Chile is a diverse society with different religious beliefs, cultural backgrounds and socioeconomic realities. I, however, am agnostic and believe in the diversity of opinions and worldviews, respecting people’s freedom of worship. During my government, we protected religious freedom based on equality and respect.

For example, we supported the Chilean Association of Interreligious Dialogue for Human Development, made up of various organizations, including the plurality of religions found in Chile. We also worked on an interreligious code of ethics for dialogue for democratic coexistence. I am certain that the respectful expression of convictions is good for our country, and enriches us as a society.

Q. It’s relatively easy to advise women and girls to persevere in seeking the life they want — in education, work and as a person — but what is the most important thing for women and girls to remember in trying to lead an exemplary life, especially in our chaotic times?

BACHELET: I get asked this question often and my answer is always the same: don’t try to be a superwoman or a super girl, because it will only bring frustrations. Instead, seek the help of someone you can count on. Be assertive but also learn the art of dialogue, learn to communicate. And, of course you should have a sense of humor!

*PassBlue is an independent, women-led digital publication offering in-depth journalism on the US-UN relationship as well as women’s issues, human rights, peacekeeping and other urgent global matters, reported from our base in the UN press corps. Founded in 2011, PassBlue is a project of the New School’s Graduate Program in International Affairs in New York and not tied financially or otherwise to the UN; previously, it was housed at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. PassBlue is a member of the Institute for Nonprofit News.

Excerpt:

Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the UN, with Liu Jieyi, China’s ambassador, before the April 18 Security Council meeting focused solely on human rights. Credit: Rick Bajornas /UN Photo

By Dulcie Leimbach
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 19 2017 (IPS)

Nikki Haley, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, presided over what she was determined to sell as “an historic meeting exclusively on human rights” in the UN Security Council. But her brief speech in the April 18 meeting fell far short of introducing innovations to confront violations of human rights or prevent them in such places as Syria, Burundi and Myanmar.

“If this Council fails to take human rights violations and abuses seriously, they can escalate into real threats to international peace and security,” Haley began. “The Security Council cannot continue to be silent when we see widespread violations of human rights.

“Why would we tell ourselves that we will only deal with questions of peace and security, without addressing the factors that bring about the threats in the first place?”

The debate, ponderously titled “Maintenance of international peace and security: human rights and prevention of armed conflict,” gave an “opportunity to reflect on the way the Security Council directly addresses human rights issues in its work,” according to a concept note from the US mission to the UN.

The afternoon meeting among the Council’s 15 permanent and elected members turned political in no time. Ukraine referred to a “human-rights phobia” in the UN and blasted away at Russia’s annexation of Crimea; Uruguay said it was the responsibility of governments to protect its citizens’ human rights as well as people “in transit.” A low-level Russian diplomat rejected the whole notion of the Council concentrating on human rights in its forum.

Yet what shone through the two-hour meeting was not Haley’s remarks but the consistent messages of other Council members, who commended the UN Human Rights Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights as indispensable partners with the Security Council. France, for example, said it was very “attached” to the Human Rights Council. Britain was effusive.

“Two institutions of the United Nations are particularly vital to delivering this joined up approach to human rights,” said Matthew Rycroft, the British ambassador to the UN. “First, the High Commissioner for Human Rights and his Office provide invaluable support to UN peace operations.” Second, he added, is the Human Rights Council.

Rights experts had hinted that Haley’s session on human rights was an attempt to undermine the UN Human Rights Council, which is based in Geneva. She has pointed to the Council as “corrupt” and said she planned to visit it in June to whip it into shape.

António Guterres, the UN secretary-general, reinforced the primary role of the UN human-rights monitoring bodies. He said that “close cooperation between the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights and all relevant United Nations bodies, including the Security Council, enhances general awareness of potential crisis situations, and our collective ability to address them.”

Guterres described the Security Council’s own “decisive action” on human rights, citing the establishment of the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere as well as the Council’s referral of atrocity cases to the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

As a matter of course, human-rights abuses are raised often by Council members as an early warning — or “prevention” — method.

As if stuck on a sales pitch, the US emphasized in the weeks before the meeting that it was holding the first exclusive session in the Council on human rights. But that is debatable, say some rights experts, since the topic has been written specifically into 15 peacekeeping mission mandates, sanctions, investigations, resolutions, special-envoy responsibilities and other matters relevant to the Council.

Even Haley acknowledged these tools of the Council, admitting their relevance and value.

Haley’s office fudged how well the Council accepted the purpose of the debate, saying that “through negotiations the United States convinced all 15 Council members to agree to put the meeting on the POW” – program of work. But the meeting was technically positioned under the international peace and security umbrella and not listed as an agenda item, a threshold that some council members refused to cross.

The US concept note for the meeting posed five questions to Council members to consider when they came to the session, as if they were being asked to write a high-school essay. The first question read, “What types of measures should the Security Council take to respond to serious human rights violations and abuses?” (The US did not appear to answer that.)

Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, tweeted in the lead-up to the meeting, is the “human rights discussion serious?” He added: “Are particular countries named? Do they include allies?”

In the Council’s early decades, human rights rarely crept into its deliberations because of Article 2, paragraph 7 of the UN Charter, which said, “Nothing contained in the present Charter shall authorize the United Nations to intervene in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state. . . . ”

Sensitive political realities kept the topic from going too deep when it did arise, according to “The Procedure of the UN Security Council,” a reference book by Loraine Sievers and Sam Daws. When a Council member wanted to raise a human-rights issue in a certain country — not unusual throughout the Cold War — ambassadors needed to show that the abuses could ripple outside the country.

Famously, the topic of Myanmar (Burma) was brought up in 2006 when the US representative and other Council members voiced concerns over the deteriorating situation in that country. They noted that Myanmar’s outflow of refugees and illegal drugs as well as contagious diseases could destabilize the region, the Sievers-Daws book said. But China objected to putting Myanmar on the Council’s agenda, denying its problems presented an international threat.

Nevertheless, the Council has not avoided taking on high-profile rights-abuse cases. The rise in abuses in Burundi last year prompted the Council to call on the government to cooperate with UN human-rights monitors — or else. And a UN commission of inquiry on North Korea declared the regime responsible for crimes against humanity, with the Council elevating the matter to its regular agenda.

In Burundi, the UN’s top human-rights official, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, said on April 18 that he was alarmed by what appeared to be a “widespread pattern” of rallies in Burundi in which members of a pro-government youth militia chant a call to “impregnate” or kill opponents. Burundi has been seized on and off by violence since its president, Pierre Nkurunziza, won a disputed third term in 2015.

(Brought to IPS readers courtesy of PassBlue, online independent coverage of the UN, a project of the Ralph Bunche Institute, City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center)

António Guterres has traveled to Africa, Europe and the Middle East since becoming UN secretary-general in January 2017. He arrives at the Mogadishu airport in Somalia, above, on March 7, 2017. TOBIN JONES/UN PHOTO

By Dulcie Leimbach
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 11 2017 (PassBlue)

When António Guterres was chosen by the United Nations Security Council in October to become the next leader of the UN, neither he nor anyone else could have predicted precisely who would be commanding the Oval Office of the White House in January 2017, just as Guterres’s term opened.

Now that Donald Trump has assumed the presidency of the United States, Guterres not only inherited a caseload of hellish problems to control with limited powers but he must also manage Trumpian plots to minimize if not gut the UN’s core work.

As a European ambassador summarized the situation for Guterres: “The terms of engagement have changed since he got the job. This is very different from anything we’ve ever seen before.”

While the wars in Yemen and Syria rage on and people die there with not one person sent to jail or prosecuted for war crimes; and as terrorism persists, famine looms in parts of the world and millions of refugees hang in limbo, Guterres surely knew his job would be ridiculously challenging.

To put it graphically, Guterres has inherited “a real pile of shit,” said Thomas G. Weiss, a New York scholar on the UN.

Raised a Catholic in Lisbon, Guterres wanted to become secretary-general to act as a savior. Having spent 10 years visiting refugee camps as head of that UN agency and given his Socialist tendencies to remember the poor and fix human injustices, Guterres might have innocently assumed he had the backing of the richest country in the world, America.

“His deep caring and pain were evident when he confessed that there was one question that always weighs heavy on his heart. ‘That is: how can we help the millions of people caught up in conflict, suffering massively in wars with no end in sight?’ ” said Kairat Umarov, the ambassador of Kazakhstan to the UN and an elected member of the Security Council.

But support from Trump, who tweeted revenge for what he perceived as the UN’s anti-Israel bias and clubby ways right before he moved into the White House, couldn’t be more unreliable than at any time in the last 10 years for the world body. This is not the first secretary-general to withstand serious blows by US administrations that were striving to win points from a broad swath of American voters, who are generally clueless about the UN.

“The other time it was like this was in the early days of [Ronald] Reagan — rocky,” recalled an American who held a top political affairs post at the UN. Moreover, with John Bolton, a US ambassador to the UN under the George W. Bush administration, the American noted, “things could have been hairy.” Yet everything, he concluded, worked out in the end for the UN.

In talking with ambassadors who represent their countries at the UN as well as policy specialists and academics, most people expressed instant empathy for Guterres as he copes in his first months in his new job, especially regarding his relationship with the US. People who commented on Guterres — mainly on background — want him to succeed.

Advice to Guterres came from many quarters. He should frame his interests and agenda “in a way where he convinces the Trump administration that he’s their ally, not their opponent,” said Melissa Labonte, a professor of political science at Fordham University in the Bronx who has written about the UN.

Trump’s fast moves to defund parts of the UN has made the normally confident Guterres “very troubled,” said a South American diplomat. Trump recently cut millions of dollars of contributions to the UN Population Fund, which provides lifesaving maternal-health care — and contraceptives — to the world’s poorest women.

Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the UN, is busy hammering away at peacekeeping missions, regardless of what any mission may do — like fight Al Qaeda terrorists in the Sahel region of Africa — or whether she has ever visited these precarious sites. She skipped a UN Security Council trip to the Lake Chad basin in West Africa, what some media and political leaders are calling the world’s most neglected crisis. Instead, she tweeted that she was home, not feeling well and watching “Lone Survivor.”

Prompted by Haley, who has admitted she is still learning on the job, Guterres sent a memo to UN program leaders to “adjust” to US cuts. Reductions to other UN aid programs hover as the US sharpens its knife to its own development arm, USAID.

“All objectives — the SDGs, peace and security — will not be achieved in the short- to medium-term,” the South American diplomat said. Guterres, who has been traveling nearly nonstop around the Middle East, Africa and Europe, would prefer to stay in New York more often. But if you consider where he has traveled — to such places as Berlin, Brussels and oil-rich Middle East nations — it may indicate he is seeking money to fill a widening US hole.

Some diplomats noted with alarm that with the US retrenching financially and criticizing it in blanket ways — always a simple target — China is eager to step into the void. Japan, which is the second-largest donor to the UN general budget, after the US, and the third-largest to the peacekeeping budget (after US and China), said it was tracking such moves by its giant neighbor.

Yet a Japanese diplomat said in an interview that it was “premature” to declare whether his country would increase its financial donations to the UN peacekeeping budget and other operations.

“China is obviously more active on the international front,” the diplomat said. “We will see what China will do in the UN” and “observe what China is going to do on the ground.”

Guterres, who is 67 and goes by Tony, is married to Catarina Vaz Pinto, who has stayed in Lisbon as the deputy mayor for cultural affairs. Guterres did his homework when he arrived on the 38th floor of the UN secretariat: his roomy office offers stunning views of New York from his aerie above the East River, including densely packed Queens, a microcosm of UN nationalities. His goal was “conflict prevention,” a mantra he invoked as a candidate for secretary-general, and his rhetoric was rooted in practicality: he wanted to keep conflicts from happening rather than unwind them as they tore places and people apart.

He was also more than willing, he said repeatedly, to reform the UN bureaucracy to be more deliberate.

“We expect Mr. Guterres to continue to work on a number of important agendas”: peace and security, reform and development and ridding peacekeeping of sexual abuses, the Japanese diplomat noted.

Angela Wells, the communications officer for the Institute of International Humanitarian Affairs at Fordham University, has worked with the Jesuit Refugee Service in Africa. She said she appreciated Guterres’s focus on conflict prevention, but that he needs to give more attention to protecting humanitarian workers, who have been increasingly killed on the job.

“In South Sudan, where historically humanitarian workers could work free from any substantive insecurity, we’re not seeing that anymore,” Wells said. “They are continually under threat in places like Yemen and Syria. He needs to emphasize that there must be no immunity for these crimes. Once humanitarian workers lose access, the whole response can collapse.”

Nikki Haley, the American ambassador to the UN, in red, at the April 7 Security Council meeting reacting to the chemical-weapons attack in Syria. RICK BAJORNAS/UN PHOTO

“The UN at large and Secretary-General Guterres, in particular, should regard these cuts as an opportunity to welcome greater contributions from the many emerging political and economic powers to better reflect the new multipolar world order,” said Mona Ali Khalil, a legal adviser for Independent Diplomat, an international group that represents nonstate actors in peace negotiations.

Guterres, Khalil added, could also achieve more diversity and regional representation in what remains a permanent-five-centric “distribution of leadership positions over the substantive departments of the Secretariat.”

UN staff members cheered on Guterres when he arrived for his first day at the UN in New York on Jan. 3. His jaunty enthusiasm struck a new tone for the UN, downtrodden by the inability of the former secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, to halt the war in Syria — stuck by Russia and China on the Security Council and unsuccessful diplomacy by the US, Britain and France, the other permanent Council members.

Guterres ran into political flak immediately with the US as he chose a special envoy for the UN’s “support mission” in Libya. Salam Fayyad, a well-respected former prime minister of Palestine, may have gotten the imperative green light from Nikki Haley, but she was apparently overruled by the White House. This embarrassment for Guterres revealed how much he needed to clear his decisions deep within the US presidency. Such direct approval has not been necessary for previous secretaries-general.

As a counterweight, Guterres had also planned to pick Tzipi Livni, the Israeli politician, for another top envoy spot in the UN. That idea vanished amid the Fayyad flap.

Another first step for Guterres was to revive the dormant Cyprus peace talks on political reunification of the island, now divided into Greek and Turkish sections. Much fanfare was made as Espen Barth Eide, the UN envoy for Cyprus and a Norwegian, met with the two sides in the Cyprus standoff early in the year. After many photo opportunities and sessions, the talks have fallen off the map.

Some analysts and media accuse the Russians for interfering in the negotiations, as they try to maintain control of offshore gas development near the island and their offshore banking interests in Cyprus.

The first Trump immigration ban, announced on Jan. 27, symbolized Guterres’s inner conflicts as the new secretary-general: should he speak against the ban on seven Muslim-majority countries to the US or relegate that tricky role to other UN officials, like the low-key refugee chief, Filippo Grandi, an Italian? Guterres took days to remark publicly on the ban, which was blocked (as was the one trotted out in March), taking heat on Twitter and from the media at the UN for his days of silence.

Since then, Guterres has held only two meetings with journalists who cover the UN in New York; for a man who vouched he would be a transparent secretary-general, his distance has provoked anger from reporters. His “discreet diplomacy,” as his office calls it, has meant not automatically issuing statements about meetings with VIPS like the ex-mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, and some government leaders, such as Justin Trudeau, the prime minister of Canada, who stopped by the UN last week.

Other crucial private discussions include half-dozen conversations with Haley, who said she found the UN “misguided.” (When asked by a reporter about what “worked” at the UN, Haley said “the diplomats” – who are not, of course, staff members of the UN.)

Haley is rumored to be forging a national name for herself through her ambassadorship to the UN, starting with unpopular tactics like decreasing the size of UN peacekeeping missions and closing others. Haley hammered the Congo operation first, despite violent politics in the country and the recent murder there of an American working for the UN, Michael Sharp. (Another UN colleague, Zaida Catalan, from Sweden, was also murdered, along with a Congolese translator.)

Haley’s approach to UN peacekeeping is not strictly about numbers, said an Italian diplomat; otherwise, “we would oppose that.” Instead, peacekeeping reform by Haley — and by Guterres — represents “an evolution” in fleshing out which missions need to be reviewed.

An accountant who ran South Carolina for nearly two terms as governor, Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, has endorsed Trump’s refugee bans, calling them necessary for keeping America safe. Her profile at the UN has spiked as she condemned the chemical weapons assault in Syria on April 4 and justified the retaliatory US missile strikes two days later. Yet her contradictions linger, as the week before those events she said that removing Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, was not a US priority. Her immediate boss, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, has also been contradictory on US foreign policy in Syria, but he has grown more consistent on his stance as he heads to Russia for a visit this week.

Haley came to the UN after turning down Trump’s offer of secretary of state, she confirmed, and as her second term as governor had one year left, with term limits stopping her from a third try in the near future. Her reputation in South Carolina was built on combining stern warnings with “Happy Monday” greetings. A big win for her was preventing a Boeing plant from unionizing in a state that never embraced collective bargaining by employees.

Haley’s blunt disdain for the Human Rights Council — “so corrupt” — echoes ancient sentiments from previous US administrations. Except, that is, for Obama’s, which determined that participating in the Council was smarter diplomacy than abandoning it. Haley’s foreign-policy contradictions extend to the Council’s membership: as Trump welcomed Egypt’s leader, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, to the White House, he and Haley didn’t mention that Egypt may be one of the big spoilers on the Council.

Inner sanctum: António Guterres and Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, on April 6 in the UN’s secretariat, New York. MARK GARTEN/UN PHOTO

Meanwhile, Guterres, Gaer noted in an email, “hasn’t defended the Council when it should be defended, nor criticized it directly. (In Geneva he said it had to be balanced, and credible, but attached no country names to his remarks which seemed to be aimed at the Council’s treatment of Israel — but might have just as easily been soothing word for Iran or Syria.)

“He needs to focus more directly on fixing the Council’s obsession with Israel, including by conveying to states that they need to end the biased treatment and should treat Israel like other countries.”

Guterres is also lagging in his goal to inject fresh blood in his ranks. He kept Ban’s communications team in place and reappointed Western officials to the most influential jobs, like peacekeeping (France), political affairs (US) and disarmament (Japan) — all men. His vow to shape a more equal UN by gender and by region is flagging. His senior appointments by gender, however, are much more advanced than under the previous secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, according to the New York University Center on International Cooperation.

In addition, his deputy, Amina Mohammed, a Nigerian who was environment minister until March and the orchestrator of the UN’s 17 global development goals, made a splash when she arrived at the UN but has not been seen much since.

Guterres’s most powerful ally among UN member states is France. France wanted Guterres, a former Portuguese prime minister, in the UN job from the get-go, reflecting the Socialist agenda of François Hollande, who leaves office as president of France this year, as well as other Western European governments. South Americans, like Brazil, a Portuguese-speaking nation, rallied close to him, too.

Most ambassadors interviewed for this article offered sympathetic assessments on Guterres: a Russian diplomat — as if mirroring his own plight — said Guterres was a “strong man” working under “huge pressures.” The American who worked in UN political affairs under Reagan and George W. Bush said that Guterres was “hitting the right notes” on peace and security issues while not getting “into arguments with the incoming administration” of the US.

After all, he added, “They [Trump administration] don’t know what they’re doing.”
Member states, explained an African ambassador on the Security Council, were banding together to optimize Guterres’s position with the US. “We are helping him by talking to America on how to improve this issue,” the diplomat said.

“If any man can deal with that government” — the US — “it’s António Guterres,” said Terje Rod-Larsen, a Norwegian who runs the International Peace Institute, a think tank located across the street from the UN.

A low bar for Guterres could be his most important advantage, said Thomas Weiss, the academic expert, given that Guterres followed Ban Ki-moon — a “disaster.”

“Never take a job after someone who has done a terrific job,” Weiss said. “You can’t possibly do it better. So, Guterres has the good fortune of following Ban Ki-moon rather than Kofi Annan.”

Kacie Candela contributed reporting to this article.

(Courtesy PassBlue, online independent coverage of the UN, a project of the Ralph Bunche Institute, City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center)