WD | United Nations
Progress Report U.N. Secretary-General Guterres Navigates World Crises and Skeptical White House by Ryan R. Migeed
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n Sept. 12, the U.N. General Assembly will meet for its first session with António Guterres as secretary-general. Guterres, who began his five-year term on Jan. 1, has already started to make his mark on the organization, while responding to potential famines in Somalia, Yemen and South Sudan; the Syrian civil war; North Korea’s nuclear ambitions; an ongoing refugee crisis; and a U.S. president who has repeatedly questioned the usefulness of the world body. In addition to addressing a litany of global crises, Guterres must manage the nuts and bolts of an organization that’s home to 193 member states, tens of thousands of employees and a dizzying array of agencies and missions. Even the U.N.’s most ardent supporters admit the bureaucracy needs to be modernized and tackle black eyes, such as Haiti’s cholera epidemic, which was introduced by a contingent of U.N. peacekeepers. Even the choice of Guterres to head the world body — while generally praised — was met with disappointment from those who had hoped a woman would become the U.N.’s first female secretary-general. Guterres seems mindful of the issue. Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for Guterres, told The Diplomat that as part of the secretary-general’s agenda, the U.N. has set an institutional goal to achieve gender parity in its senior ranks and then across the organization. Guterres also has bolstered efforts to investigate allegations of sexual abuse by U.N. peacekeepers in the Central African Republic and elsewhere, a longstanding problem. A compact among member states addressing the issue and outlining common policies to prevent it is on the agenda for the September meeting. Guterres, a former U.N. high commissioner for refugees, also wants to make the world body more efficient, accountable and nimble. He has proposed decentralizing authority in the top-heavy bureaucracy, streamlining peacekeeping and other institutions, and increasing development funds by showing donors more verifiable results.
Strong Voice at a Critical Juncture Guterres, 68, is the ninth secretarygeneral of the United Nations, succeeding Ban Ki-moon, who served from 2007 to the end of 2016. The selection of Guterres was historically unprecedented in its transparency. The 12 candidates shared their
Photo: U.N. / Tobin Jones
U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres is received at Mogadishu’s Aden Adde International Airport with an honor guard during a March visit to Somalia.
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U.S. involvement in the U.N. is critical. The U.S. has a leadership role to play in the United Nations. Stéphane Dujarric spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres
views on international issues and presented their visions in open meetings before the General Assembly. For the first time in the U.N.’s 70-year history, these internal proceedings were televised live. But as in past votes, the final arbiter of the decision-making process came down to the five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, where Russia and the U.S. must agree on a consensus candidate. Historically, the secretary-general has come into the job hamstrung by the big world powers, often representing a safe compromise who won’t threaten U.S. or Russian interests. Still, Guterres is a high-profile name whose independence won’t be easily neutered. Born in Lisbon, Guterres was raised under the watchful eyes of dictatorship and spent extended periods in the countryside, where he grew to sympathize with the struggles of poverty. He began his career in public service when he was elected to the Por-
12 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | SEPTEMBER 2017
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tuguese Parliament in 1976. He served as a member for 17 years and went on to become prime minister of Portugal from 1995 to 2002. Prior to his appointment as secretary-general, Guterres served as the U.N. high commissioner for refugees (UNHCR) from 2005 to 2015, heading one of the world’s foremost humanitarian organizations at a time when the number of people displaced by conflict and persecution rose from 38 million to over 60 million. During his tenure, he called for better treatment of refugees by European nations, worked to secure funding for Syrian refugees and oversaw the most significant structural reform process in the agency’s history. This experience seemed to influence the Security Council’s decision in choosing a successor to Ban at the height of the worst refugee crisis to hit Europe since World War II. At the time, Lord Michael Williams, a former top U.N. official, praised the
choice, calling Guterres “extremely well-qualified.” “In selecting António Guterres, many members of the Security Council were acutely aware that migration and refugee issues are likely to continue to dominate the international agenda in the coming years,” Williams wrote in a blog post last year for Chatham House, a think tank in London. Dujarric told The Diplomat that Guterres’s experience as UNHCR “at a time of increasing numbers of refugees” informs how he approaches his new role. Dujarric described Guterres’ strategy for tackling the world’s challenges as “preventive diplomacy.” This “doesn’t just mean preventing conflict, but investing in development” such as good governance, climate readiness and community health, Dujarric said. Guterres has said that preventing conflict “means going back to basics — strengthening institutions and building resilient societies,” he wrote in a January Newsweek op-ed. “Since so many conflicts emerge from disenfranchisement and marginalization, it means putting respect for human rights at the center of national and international policy.” Refugees International, an advocacy organization based in Washington,