The first in the United Nations’ 70-year history, the public debate on June 12 for the organization’s highest position, Secretary General, signals in the eyes of many a move towards greater transparency and member participation — two major historical areas of criticism of the UN.
Previously, the five permanent Security Council members (P5) would bargain in secrecy, then presenting their selected candidate to the General Assembly (GA) for a rubber stamp. This year, the P5 will still vote amongst themselves and present their candidate to the GA, but, with candidates nominated by Member States, national parliaments, and civil society — along with input from the GA throughout the selection process (including Tuesday night’s debate)—this is certainly the most democratic the world’s largest democracy-promoting body has ever been.
As of the debate, 12 candidates had formally received recognition from the President of the GA. Of those 12, only 10 were able to participate in Tuesday’s debate. Those 10 were split into two groups of five in order to maintain reasonably spaced intervals of participation.
To introduce the candidates, Al Jazeera, organizer and broadcaster of the event, displayed the following “vision statements” for each:
- Irina Bokova (Director of UNESCO): A humanistic approach to tackle challenges and threats
- Antonio Guterres (Former Portugal Prime Minister): Strengthen peace & security, sustainable development, and human rights policies
- Helen Clark (Former New Zealand Prime Minister): Bring Member States together to forge united action
- Vuk Jeremic (Former Serbia Foreign Minister): Address growing political friction & erosion of confidence in the international system
- Christiana Figueres (Former UN Climate Chief): Address rampant injustices, abuses, unrest & conflicts
- Srgjan Kerim (Former Macedonia Foreign Minister): Faith, belief, & partnership between nations & people can restore war-torn & desolate communities
- Natalia Gherman (Former Moldova Deputy Prime Minister): An effective UN working to end poverty & wars, protect rights, & preserve the planet
- Miroslav Lajcak (Slovakia Foreign Minister): UN needs to adjust its ways of operation & enhance its capacity to deliver
- Susana Malcorra (Argentina Foreign Minister): A people, planet, & prosperity-centred UN serving affected populations & addressing their problems
- Igor Luksic (Former Montenegro Foreign Minister): To make ever more value for money invested to achieve the commitment to leave no one behind
- Vesna Pusic (Former Croatia Deputy Prime Minister): UN is essential but flawed — peacekeepers don’t keep peace, safe zones aren’t safe
- Danilo Turk (Former Slovenia President): Strong commitment to the UN’s original purpose to eliminate poverty, ensure sustainability, strengthen human dignity & prevent violent conflicts
Notice any patterns? Candidates include 8 Eastern Europeans and 6 women — neither has ever held the position of Secretary General. Two are Latin American women (Argentine Malcorra and Costa Rican Figueres), and three — Jeremic, Gherman, and Luksic — are under fifty years of age.
What about the vision statements? Any patterns? Every one raises interesting and important issues and expectations for the UN; however, it is highly unlikely that any of the candidates would disagree with their competitors’ statements, and that is precisely the organization’s problem. Yes, the statements were short — less than a sixth of a tweet for the longest — but the candidates’ answers fell along the same lines throughout the night, without extending far beyond their statements’ rather vague, overlapping concepts and obvious observations. Terms such as “security”, “development”, “sustainability”, and “human rights” were quickly and firmly established as buzzwords. In a rare moment of clarity for the whole field, Pusic insightfully noted that Secretary General elections typically create “an atmosphere in which catchy phrases and a lack of responsibility [are] the name of the game.” Despite the respectable absence of blame-throwing and confrontation, that is politics by (connotative) definition. And in this realm of so little rhetorical variety, rhetoric wins for no one.
That is not to suggest, of course, that the UN should seek more ideological diversity; the UN was founded on the principles of human rights promotion and conflict evasion that this year’s candidates too well echo. However, in acknowledging (or at least assuming) that its members collectively subscribe to such principles, it should encourage them to pinpoint and debate their differences in opinion and to fill in the lines of their abstract affirmations of shared guidelines. In place of confirming their basic morality, candidates must reach and communicate the more conclusive and applicable manifestations in the world around us, confirming their intellect. They should be judged not just by the procedural experience they would bring to the office, but by the their ideas and their aptness for innovation — whether they invent, develop, or simply advocate those ideas along the way to realization.
The UN’s problems lie not so much in its agenda or priorities, but in its structure. It suffers consistent failures to accomplish its goals and meet its deadlines, or even address problems at all. Member States and (intended) benefactors notice and respond in turn with cynicism, and for Member-States, a lack of cooperation. They thus push the organization further towards stagnation and condemnation. Tuesday’s historic debate demonstrated clear potential for greater mutual trust in the near future between the UN and governments, civil societies, and people around the world, but, by habit or by intention, it needlessly fell victim to what should be the next global epidemic it addresses: political speak.
