Helen Clark former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Administrator of the UN Development Program is one of four female candidates to be the next UN Secretary-General. Credit: UN Photo/Loey Felipe.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 2016 (IPS)

After hundreds of questions were posed to nine candidates vying for the role of United Nations Secretary-General this week, a lasting question remains; will the UN’s new leader stand for the powerful or the powerless?

The selection of the ninth secretary-general of the United Nations has been seen as a chance for change within the 70 year old global organisation. Some see 2016 as the time for the first woman to be chosen to lead the organisation which represents over 7 billion people. Others believe that it is time for the selection process to become more open so that all of the UN’s 193 member states get a say in who is chosen. Historically it has been the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States – which have ultimately decided.

The latter concerns were in part addressed this week, with the nine candidates who have so far announced their candidacies answering questions from the UN’s 193 member states, civil society and the media during an open selection process.

Four of the nine candidates are women, also raising hopes on the gender equality front.

Oxfam Executive Director Winnie Byanyima told IPS that the next Secretary-General should not only be a woman, but that she should also be a feminist.

“It is time for the next Secretary-General of the United Nations to be a woman,” Byanyima told IPS. “She must also be a feminist, promoting women’s rights and gender equality, she must stand up for the poorest and most vulnerable,” said Byanyima.

Natalie Samarasinghe, Executive Director of the United Nations Association UK agreed that the Secretary-General should be a feminist but said that the process should be open to women and men from all countries, adding that she would still love to see a woman selected. “I think that it’s appalling a sign of how bad the process is that we haven’t had good women seriously considered in the past,” said Samarasinghe.

A custom at the United Nations means that it is considered to be Eastern Europe’s turn to provide the next Secretary-General, however Europe is the only continent which is split into more than one group, making this custom open to challenges. Two of the nine candidates so far are from outside Eastern Europe.

Samarasinghe said that she hoped to see more geographically diverse candidates emerge. “It would be massively remiss of states not to put forward a developing (country) candidate,” she said.

Carne Ross, the director of Independent Diplomat told IPS that the nationality or gender of the candidate is not the most important issue. “What really matters most is somebody who’s strong who’s smart and has got the courage and the judgment to stand up to some of the unhealthily dominant powers at the UN,” said Ross.

Ross said that he believes it is still unclear whether the new more open selection process will ultimately result in a better candidate being selected.

However Samarasinghe said that the more open process was important because it reflected on the UN more broadly.

“There is a huge onus on institutions to become more transparent and inclusive,” said Samarasinghe.

You have the UN which goes around the world promoting good governance having this hugely secretive process, so I think that the process is important,” she said.

Samarasinghe said that many member states feel that “the vast majority of states are sidelined” in the selection process and that the more open process may help rebalance this relationship.

Byanyima also called for greater UN reforms, arguing that the UN needed to help the UN meet unprecedented global challenges “be it confronting protracted conflicts and a massive global displacement crisis, or tackling climate change.”

“The UN and its Security Council must undertake much-needed reforms to become more inclusive, accountable, democratic, effective, and reflective of a world in which political and economic power has shifted,” she said.

The current pool of candidates includes former heads of state and government and several current and former high level UN officials with experience working on issues representing the world’s poor and vulnerable, experience also reflected in their answers this week. For example Helen Clark, former Prime Minister of New Zealand and Administrator of the UN Development Program told journalists of her intentions to be a “voice for the voiceless” and Antonio Guterres, of Portugal, former UN High Commissioner for Refugees told journalists of how his experience volunteering with the homeless had inspired his career in politics.

Yet it remains possible that none of the nine candidates who have so far made their campaigns public will ultimately be chosen.

“In the past it was the best strategy for the candidates to hang back and go quietly lobby in the P5 (permanent five members of the Security Council) capitals but this time around I think there is a transparent open process that they cannot ignore,” said Samarasinghe.

By Helen Clark
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 25 2013 (IPS)

On Tuesday, leaders of five large emerging economies – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, known as the BRICS – will gather in Durban, South Africa to discuss harnessing their formidable resources on behalf of faster development progress in Africa and elsewhere.

UNDP Administrator Helen Clark. Credit: UNDP (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

The summit’s intent is to promote global policy reforms, and to draw on their own national experiences and comparative advantages to help solve global problems.

The gathering is important: it is another sign that the world as we knew it is quickly changing.

High on the BRICS agenda is a commitment to kick-start the stalled Doha round of world trade talks and to push for fairer rules governing commerce in agriculture and other critical areas. The BRICS bloc will also be exploring ways to boost growth and overall development progress in Africa through expanded trade, investment, technology transfer, and financial support.

In one especially bold initiative under consideration, the five countries will examine proposals to create their own BRICS development bank.

The readiness of the BRICS countries to offer their own new international development initiatives and policy ideas is a clear manifestation of the changing global development landscape examined in UNDP’s newly released 2013 Human Development Report, “The Rise of the South: Human Progress in a Diverse World”. 

This dramatic change in global dynamics, however, goes well beyond the BRICS. More than forty developing countries are estimated to have made unusually rapid human development strides in recent decades, according to the Report. Together, they represent most of the world’s population and a growing proportion of its trade and economic output.

The progress of these fast mover countries measured in human development terms has accelerated markedly in the past decade. These geographically, culturally, and politically varied countries share a keen sense of pragmatism and a commitment to people, as seen through investments in education, health care, and social protection, and their engagement with the global economy. Neither rigid command economies nor laissez-faire free marketeers, they are guided by what works in their own national circumstances.

The BRICS countries themselves, while not alone, are key movers behind the rise of the South. As the 2013 global Human Development Report documents, they are contributing to development elsewhere in the South through trade, investment, and bilateral assistance. There are now many opportunities to harness the collective experiences of the rising South for the benefit of those countries not developing as fast.

The 2013 Report proposes convening a new “South Commission”, drawing on the pioneering example of the South Commission led in the late 1980s by Julius Nyerere, then president of Tanzania, and Manmohan Singh, now prime minister of India.

Through such a commission, leaders of the South could put forward their own recommendations for more inclusive and effective global governance in the 21st century.

As the BRICS summit demonstrates, the nations of the South are not standing still, waiting for reforms to happen in global governance. They are putting increasing energy and resources into newer instruments of political and economic co-operation, including regional institutions from Southeast Asia, southern Africa, and South America, to the Gulf States, the Caribbean, and West Africa’s ECOWAS group.

They have good reason to do so. If better coordinated, through what the 2013 Report terms “coherent pluralism,” with a clear consensus on shared goals, this evolving ecosystem of bilateral, regional, and international groupings can help advance sustainable human development in decades to come.

Multilateral action remains crucial for problems requiring global solutions – climate change is perhaps the most urgent example.

Yet the system of global governance devised in the mid-20th century is increasingly distanced from 21st century realities. China, for example, is the world’s second biggest economy, and holds more than 3 trillion dollars in foreign exchange reserves – more than all of Europe combined. Yet it has a smaller voting share in the World Bank than do France or the United Kingdom. Africa and Latin America also have issues of under-representation in important world fora.

The rise of the South does not imply an eclipse of the North. Human development is not a zero-sum game. People everywhere benefit from a healthier, better educated, more prosperous, and more stable world. A better-balanced North-South partnership can help achieve those goals.

A greater voice for the South also means greater responsibility, with shared accountability for solving problems and sustaining progress. A more engaged, successful South, meanwhile, helps the North, through its economic dynamism and collaboration on global challenges. As the 2013 Human Development Report says, the South still needs the North, but, increasingly, the North also needs the South.

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