United Nations Secretary-General

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Kofi Annan, current Secretary-General of the United Nations

The Secretary-General of the United Nations is the head of the Secretariat, one of the principal organs of the United Nations.

The current Secretary-General is Kofi Annan of Ghana. He became Secretary-General on 1 January 1997, and his second term will expire on 31 December 2006. On 13 October 2006, the Security Council's choice of Ban Ki-moon of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) to succeed Annan was ratified by acclamation in the General Assembly, consisting of all 192 UN member governments. Ban's five-year term as the next Secretary-General is to run from 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2011.

1 Role
- 1.1 Term and selection
2 Secretaries-General
3 2006 Selection
4 Cultural references
5 See also
6 References
7 External links
- 7.1 2006 selection process

[edit] Role

Image:Dag Hammarskjold.jpg

The Secretary-General was envisioned by U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt as a "world moderator" but the office was defined in the UN Charter as the organization's "chief administrative officer" (Article 97). Nevertheless, this more restricted description has not prevented the office holders from speaking out and playing important roles on global issues, to various degrees.

[edit] Term and selection

Secretaries-General serve for renewable five-year terms; most have served two terms. The Charter provides for the Secretary-General to be appointed by the General Assembly upon the nomination of the Security Council. Therefore, the selection is subject to the veto of any of the five permanent members of the Security Council.

The Charter's minimal language has since been supplemented by other procedural rules and accepted practices. In practice, the Secretary-General cannot be a national of any of the permanent members of the Security Council. An accepted practice of regional rotation has also been adopted in the selection of successive candidates. This has strangely, though, resulted in no North American holder of the office, from Canada or Mexico. The ability of candidates to converse in both English and French is also considered an unofficial qualification for the office.

Most Secretaries-General are compromise-candidates from middle powers and with little prior fame. High-profile candidates are often touted for the job, but are almost always rejected as unpalatable to some. For instance, figures like Charles de Gaulle, Dwight Eisenhower and Anthony Eden were considered for the first Secretary-General position, but were rejected in favour of the uncontroversial Norwegian Trygve Lie. Due to international politics and mechanicisms of political compromise, there are many similarities between the process and ideals for selecting the Secretary-General and those of selecting leading figures in other international organizations, including the election of Popes in the Roman Catholic Church.

In the early 1960s, Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev led an effort to abolish the Secretary-General position. The numerical superiority of the Western powers meant that the Secretary-General would come from one of them, and would typically be sympathetic towards the West. Khrushchev advanced a proposal to replace the Secretary-General with a three-person leading council (a "troika"): one member from the West, one from the Communist states, and one from the Non-Aligned powers. This idea failed because the neutral powers failed to back the Soviet proposal.

[edit] Secretaries-General

#	Photo	Secretary-General	Dates in office	Country of origin	Remarks	References
		Sir Gladwyn Jebb	24 October 1945– 2 February 1946	Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg United Kingdom (Europe)	Acting Secretary-General
1		Trygve Halvdan Lie	2 February 1946 – 10 November 1952	Image:Flag of Norway.svg Norway (Europe)	Resigned	[1]
2	Image:Dag Hammarskjold.jpg	Dag Hammarskjöld	10 April 1953 – 18 September 1961	Image:Flag of Sweden.svg Sweden (Europe)	Died in a plane crash in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia)	[2]
3	Image:U-Thant-10617.jpg	U Thant	30 November 1961 – 31 December 1971	Image:Flag of Burma (1948-1974).svg Burma (Asia)	Retired after 2nd term for personal reasons	[3]
4		Kurt Waldheim	1 January 1972 – 31 December 1981	Image:Flag of Austria.svg Austria (Europe)	Chinese veto for his third term	[4]
5		Javier Pérez de Cuéllar	1 January 1982 – 31 December 1991	Image:Flag of Peru.svg Peru (South America)	Refused a third term	[5]
6	Image:Boutros Boutros-Ghali.jpg	Boutros Boutros-Ghali	1 January 1992 – 31 December 1996	Image:Flag of Egypt.svg Egypt (Africa)	U.S. veto of his second term	[6]
7		Kofi Annan	1 January 1997– 31 December 2006	Image:Flag of Ghana.svg Ghana (Africa)		[7]
8		Ban Ki-moon	1 January 2007–	Image:Flag of South Korea (bordered).svg South Korea (Asia)		[8]

[edit] 2006 Selection

Ban Ki-moon, Secretary General-designate

When the race to succeed Annan began, it was widely expected the successful candidate would be Asian, since a number of Security Council members (including China, which has a veto) indicated they would only support an Asian candidate. [9]

Noting that all Secretaries-General to date have been men, Equality Now launched a campaign for the election of a female Secretary-General, and identified a ‘sampling’ of 18 qualified women, including Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, Louise Arbour, Gro Harlem Brundtland, Helen Clark and Tarja Halonen.[10] Equality Now also noted that there are many qualified Asian women, including Sadako Ogata from Japan, Nafis Sadik from Pakistan, Anson Chan from Hong Kong, and Leticia Shahani from the Philippines. [11] The idea of a female Secretary-General received some support (including from Kofi Annan [12] and US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton, [13]) but no Asian women were nominated.

[edit] Nominees

Seven candidates were officially nominated for the position: [14]

Image:Flag of Sri Lanka.svg - Jayantha Dhanapala (nominated by Sri Lanka; withdrew from race on 29 September)
Image:Flag of India.svg - Shashi Tharoor (nominated by India; withdrew from race on 2 October)
Image:Flag of Afghanistan.svg - Ashraf Ghani (nominated by Afghanistan; withdrew from race on 4 October)
Image:Flag of Jordan.svg - HRH Prince Zeid Ra’ad Zeid Al-Hussein (nominated by Jordan; withdrew from race on 4 October)
Image:Flag of Thailand.svg - Surakiart Sathirathai (nominated by Thailand; withdrew from race on 5 October)
Image:Flag of Estonia.svg Image:Flag of Latvia.svg Image:Flag of Lithuania.svg - Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga (nominated by Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; withdrew from race on 5 October)
Image:Flag of South Korea (bordered).svg - Ban Ki-moon (nominated by South Korea)

A number of other potential candidates were mentioned by commentators but did not run, including Bill Clinton (former President of the United States), Anwar Ibrahim (former Deputy Prime Minister of Malaysia), Goh Chok Tong (Senior Minister of the Republic of Singapore), José Ramos Horta (Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and Prime Minister of East Timor), Aleksander Kwasniewski (former President of Poland), and Tony Blair (Prime Minister of the United Kingdom).[15]

[edit] Election

The Security Council conducted four straw polls, on 24 July,<ref>Ban takes 1st Straw Poll. UNSG.org (2006-07-24). Retrieved on 2006-09-28.</ref> 14 September<ref>Ban firms up lead in second Straw Poll. UNSG.org (2006-09-14). Retrieved on 2006-09-28.</ref>, 28 September <ref>Ban slips but holds, Vike Freiberga pushes into third. UNSG.org (2006-09-28). Retrieved on 2006-09-28.</ref> and 2 October <ref>Ban Ki-moon wins. UNSG.org (2006-10-02). Retrieved on 2006-10-02.</ref> in which each of the 15 member states were asked whether they would “encourage” or “discourage” each of the official candidates (or if they had “no opinion” on the candidate). Ban Ki-moon topped each of these polls. In the fourth poll, Ban emerged as the only candidate with the support of all five permanent members, each of whom has the power to veto candidates. After the vote, Shashi Tharoor, who finished second, withdrew his candidacy<ref>Shashi Tharoor pulls out of UN race. NDTV.com (2006-10-02). Retrieved on 2006-10-02.</ref> and China's Permanent Representative to the UN told reporters that “it is quite clear from today's straw poll that Minister Ban Ki-moon is the candidate that the Security Council will recommend to the General Assembly”. [16]

Zeid and Ghani withdrew from the race on 4 October.<ref>Jordanian, Afghan candidates drop out of race for next UN chief. Xinhua (2006-10-05). Retrieved on 2006-10-05.</ref> They were followed on 5 October by Surakiart and Vīķe-Freiberga, leaving only Ban in the race.[17] The Security Council conducted a formal vote on 9 October, and forwarded its choice to the General Assembly, which then elected him on 13 October.<ref>South Korean elected new UN Chief. BBC News (2006-10-13). Retrieved on 2006-10-13.</ref>

[edit] Criticism

There has been concern over the appointment of Kyung-wha Kang, Ban's campaign manager, as deputy high commissioner for human rights, an assistant secretary-general-level position, with only weeks left in Kofi Annan's term. [18]

[edit] Cultural references

A fictional Secretary-General was featured in the Arthur C. Clarke novel Childhood's End. Also, in the television series The X-Files, Marita Covarrubias was established as holding the position of Special Representative to the Secretary-General.
The Left Behind novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins feature Nicolae Carpathia, who ascends to the Secretary-General position and eventually turns the U.N. into the Global Community, a world-wide government, and the Secretary-General position into the Supreme Potentate of the GC with his machinations.