Today the UN General Assembly (GA) adopted a resolution (see pgs 9-23) which makes significant progress on 1 for 8 Billion’s campaign to boost transparency and inclusivity in UN appointment processes.
While the text was replete with missed opportunities, it makes progress on crucial reforms relating to the Secretary-General selection process, several of which the 1 for 8 Billion campaign has advocated for since our founding in 2014.
The resolution also makes progress on related proposals for other senior leaders, suggesting that the transformations achieved for the Secretary-General selection process are having a useful trickle-down effect within the UN system.
Progress was achieved under difficult circumstances and is in no small part testament to the skillful work of the co-facilitators of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Revitalization of the General Assembly: Egriselda López, Permanent Representative of El Salvador, and Mitch Fifield, Permanent Representative of Australia.
On the selection of the Secretary-General
Today’s resolution breaks new ground in the General Assembly by tackling the opacity surrounding Secretary-General (SG) candidates’ campaign funding. Specifically, the General Assembly “Invites candidates during future processes to voluntarily disclose any funding sources they have relating to their candidature”. This new convention, backed strongly by the ACT group of states, could reveal which candidates are the best funded, where their money is coming from and if there are conflicts of interest between funding sources and their planned policy programme which candidates are obliged to outline in their vision statement.
This campaign has advocated for transparency in candidate financing since 2016. Through interactions with candidates in the 2016 SG selection process, we were successful in getting voluntary disclosures from Slovenia’s candidate (Danilo Türk). We continued to campaign on this issue in subsequent years with our advocacy briefings as well as a report by 1 for 8 Billion co-founder, UNA-UK were circulated widely to states during the negotiations for this resolution. Our briefings have drawn attention to the historical double-standard whereby senior UN leaders below the rank of Secretary-General are mandated to make financial disclosures, and encouraged to (voluntarily) publish these disclosures - helping to scrutinise any potential conflicts of interest and build public faith in the impartiality of the UN’s leadership.
We are delighted that candidates for Secretary-General are now expected to make their own financial disclosures and we call on all candidates to observe this convention while further volunteering all relevant financial information and associations that could help reassure the UN’s membership and the public that the candidate is free from conflicts of interest. This is the minimum level of transparency that should be expected from applicants for such a vital global role, and would help ensure that future Secretaries-General hold themselves to the same standard as is expected of their own senior staff.
The resolution also offers hope of more structure in future selection processes. 1 for 8 Billion, together with a wide group of progressive states, has long called for a clear timetable laying out the different stages of the SG selection process. In 2016 the process was disrupted due to a late entry into the race; while the resolution stops short of establishing deadlines for the nomination of candidates, it enables the Presidents of the General Assembly and Security Council to lay out “notional events” in the selection process, which offers latitude to suggest a timeline for the process.
Modest progress was made on the perhaps the most pressing issue relating the appointment of the Secretary-General: the continued lack of a female Secretary-General since the UN’s founding in 1945. While two years ago, a similar resolution invited states to bear in mind the unbroken chain of male Secretaries-General when nominating candidates for the next term (2027-2031) this year’s resolution upgrades the wording from “invites” to “strongly encourages”. While this will strengthen the widely accepted view that no state should be putting forward male candidates in the next selection process, it still falls well short of explicitly asking states to only consider the nomination of female candidates
The resolution also usefully consolidates a number of positive reforms that we have championed, including the ability for more than one member state to nominate a candidate, the active participation of civil society during selection processes, the necessity of a full selection process for candidates applying for a second term in office and the UN to host a public repository of information relevant to this appointment process on its website. At present, our 1 for 8 Billion website constitutes the most thorough repository on this matter - we are delighted that the UN should soon be providing an official source for such information.
There were also a number of reforms that we pushed for that did not make the cut, including the popular proposal for the General Assembly to request multiple candidates to be recommended by the Security Council to give the UN’s wider membership a meaningful say, as well as the proposal for future Secretaries-General to serve a single, longer term of office. We understand from having seen earlier drafts of the resolution that positive wording supported by a majority of states (including the ACT and NAM groupings) that would have made progress on both these reforms was nixed along the way by members of the P5 - who collaborated closely to guard the influence that they can wield when it comes to the selection of the UN’s most important employee. This was reported on in by Blue Smoke:
“A remarkable hallmark of the negotiations was the surprising shape of the collaboration along the way. In public, Russia and China frequently trade grave allegations with Britain and the United States. Behind closed doors, the P5 caucus appears to be alive and well. Friendly cooperation and shared positions on axing wording that could puncture their privilege are the order of the day. Despite the French being in lockstep with their P4 colleagues on most of this agenda, in the main they conveniently avoided this awkward huddle since the EU negotiate as a bloc on this portfolio.”
Read the resolution in full (see pgs 9-23)
Read more about these negotiations via the 1 for 8 Billion website
Read UNA-UK’s report outlining the top 10 reforms that are needed