A new informal vote in the United Nations Security Council, held yesterday, Thursday, showed that the former Vice President of Costa Rica, Rebecca Greenspan, 70, has widened her lead and remains the front-runner to become the 10th Secretary-General, succeeding António Guterres at the end of the year, according to sources at the Reuters news agency.
Ms. Greenspan received 12 “encouraging” votes and three “discouraging” votes in the eighth consecutive informal closed-door ballot of this kind.
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The process over the past few months has been aimed at selecting the person who will succeed Mr. Guterres, 77, who will complete his second five-year term on December 31.
Whoever is elected to the position will be called upon to address multiple crises: wars, cuts in U.S. funding for the UN, and the waning influence of the international organization, as the current administration in Washington has withdrawn from dozens of its agencies.
For any of the candidates to be nominated, a formal vote will be required. It will be organized once a candidate is deemed to have a strong chance of winning, with at least 9 “encouragement” votes and no “discouragement” votes from any of the five permanent members of the Security Council (the U.S., the U.K., France, Russia, and China).
It is not clear at this stage what the positions of these five countries were in yesterday’s informal vote.
In six of the seven votes held in recent months, Ms. Greenspan was in the lead, albeit by a narrow margin. In only one—in August—Guyana’s ambassador to the UN, Caroline Rodriguez-Birkett, 52, had secured the most “encouragement” votes.
Yesterday, Ms. Rodriguez-Birkett received 8 votes and fell to third place. In second place was Rafael Grossi, 65, the current Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with 9 votes.
The results are nearly identical to those of last week; however, Ms. Greenspan secured one additional “encouragement” vote.
Diplomat Lana Nusaiba from the United Arab Emirates, who entered the race last, just as she did last week, came in fourth, with seven “encouragement” votes, six “discouragement” votes, and two member states “abstaining.”
By comparison, when António Guterres was elected in October 2016, it took six informal ballots for the Security Council to reach a consensus.
An informal tradition calls for rotation based on geographic criteria for the position, but it is not always followed. This time, it is Latin America’s “turn” to elect a Secretary-General, which explains why most of the nominations came from that region.
In the UN’s more than 80-year history, no woman has ever held the position, and several countries are pushing for this to change.
The resulting nomination will then be submitted to the General Assembly. To date, the General Assembly has ratified the Security Council’s selection in every single case without exception.
