In its eighty years of life the United Nations had nine General Secretaries — ten, if counted also the British Gladwyn Jebb, who held the interim position between October 1945 and February 1946, before the Norwegian election Trygve Lie — and no one was ever a woman. This year could change: António Guterres’ second term closed on December 31, 2026, and the tenth General Secretary will enter office on January 1, 2027 for a five-year term. Candidates running today, five out of eight are women.
The trial officially started on 25 November 2025, when the President of the General Assembly Annalena Baerbock and the President of the Security Council, Michael Imran Kanu, sent a joint letter to the 193 member states to invite them to submit applications. In the text it was noted with regret that no woman has ever held the position and explicitly encouraged states to consider women by force, recalling at the same time the importance of regional diversity.
Applications came within nine months. Argentina presented Rafael Grossi, Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, on 26 November 2025. Brazil, Chile and Mexico have nominated Michelle Bachelet, former Chilean president and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on 2 February: on 24 March José Antonio Kast’s government retired Chile’s support, and the candidacy continues with the support of Brazil and Mexico. On March 2, Burundi candidateed former Senegalese president Macky Sall, the day after Costa Rica presented Rebeca Grynspan, former vice president of the country and secretary general of the UN agency for trade and development (UNCTAD), who then temporarily left the post to campaign. On 11 May Antigua and Barbuda nominated Ecuadorian María Fernanda Espinosa, former Foreign Minister and Defence Minister and former President of the General Assembly; on 15 June Guyana presented its permanent representative to the UN, Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, former Foreign Minister of the country; on 24 July Uganda nominated Olara Otunnu, former UN Secretary-General. On 18 August Baerbock announced that the Kingdom of Tonga had presented the Ecuadorian diplomat Ivonne A-Baki, former Minister of Industry, former President of the Andean Parliament and ambassador to Washington, Paris and Doha. A ninth candidacy, that of Argentine Virginia Gamba presented by the Maldives on 11 March, was withdrawn on 25 of the same month.
A New York, the public phase of the process opened on 21 and 22 April, in the Trusteeship Council Hall, with the so-called interactive dialogues: three hours per head, from 10 to 13 and from 15 to 18, to expose one’s vision and answer questions of member states and civil society organizations, directed at UN Web TV. Since new applications have arrived, other dialogues have been held on June 15 and 18 and then on August 19 and 20. The moment of greater visibility came on July 23, with the town hall in the General Assembly Hall: a presidential style comparison that brought candidates on the same stage. In an informal survey conducted by Bloomberg among the present in the room immediately after, 49 percent indicated Rodrigues Birkett as the most convincing, followed by Grynspan with 14 percent and Expinosa with 10.
Then the match moved to the Security Council, which started the application exam on 29 May. The first straw poll, the informal and secret ballot with which the fifteen members indicate for each candidate “encourage”, “discover” or “no opinion”, was held on 30 July. According to the results reported by diplomatic sources, Grynspan arrived first with ten votes of encouragement, one against and four abstentions, followed by Rodrigues Birkett with nine and by Grossi with seven; back the other four candidates then running. A figure struck the observers: about 34 percent of the boards were “no opinion”, against 21 percent of the first straw chicken in 2016, a sign of a race still very open.
The second round was held on Friday, 21 August, under the Danish Presidency of the Council. Rodrigues Birkett went to the head with eight encouragements, three votes against and four abstentions, exceeding Grynspan and Grossi, both stopped at seven encouragements (but with four against the first and six the second). No one has reached the threshold of the nine votes, and according to PassBlue the most marked progression was that of Otunnu. Also this time the results were not published officially: Danish ambassador Christina Markus Lassen was limited to confirm that the vote had taken place and that candidates would be informed through permanent representatives of the states that have candidates. At this stage the boards are all identical, and are destroyed after counting; only in subsequent shifts the Council will pass different colour cards for the five permanent members, making visible the threat of veto.
To be recommended to the General Assembly, a candidate must obtain at least nine votes in the Council and do not collect the veto of the United States, Russia, China, France or the United Kingdom. At that point only the Assembly, where 193 states sit, formalizes the appointment. The choice also weighs the unwritten practice of geographical rotation, which many consider favorable to the group of Latin America and the Caribbean: six of the eight candidates belong to that group, because Guyana is also part of it.
A New York campaign for a first General Woman Secretary also has an organized face. WomanSG, a group of academics and civil society representatives chaired by Jean Krasno, professor at the City College of New York, has long been fighting for this goal; on the international front, campaign 1 for 8 Billion, which calls for an open and meritorious selection process and claims that after eighty years of men, states should apply only women, and GWL Voices with its initiative #MadamSecrGeneraletary. The work seems to have left the mark: according to the monitoring of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders, in March 2026 112 member states had expressed strong or “very strong” support for the election of a woman leading the organization.
L’articolo The UN driving race, and the possibility that a woman will win it for the first time comes from IlNewyorkese.
