The United Nations is going to have a new Secretary General very soon. The Incumbent, Ban Ki-Moon, will be stepping down at the end of the year. Therefore the search for a new Secretary General has begun in earnest.
The selection process this time is being said to be more transparent as member nations will have a say in who gets picked and have a chance to question them on policies and so on.
With the decision on a new secretary General still up in the air, a group of at least 56 countries, led by Colombia, and several civil society groups want the UN’s first female secretary-general since its creation at the end of World War Two.
The Security council will likely hold its first “straw poll” – a sort of informal vote – behind closed doors in July and aims to have a decision by September so the General Assembly can elect the next UN chief in October.
Half of the candidates nominated so far are women: UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova of Bulgaria; former Croatian Foreign Minister Vesna Pusic; Moldova’s former Foreign Minister Natalia Gherman; and former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who heads the UN Development Programme.
You can check them out below.
Irina Bokova
Irina Bokova of Bulgaria has been the director general of the UNESCO since 2009. She is the first woman and the first eastern European to lead the organisation
Vesna Pusic
Vesna Pusic of Croatia has been the country’s foreign minister up until January 2016. She is president of the Croatian People’s Party – Liberal Democrats
Natalia Gherman
Natalia Gherman of Moldova has been the country’s foreign minister for the past three years until January 2016. Before that, she was an ambassador to a number of countries
Helen Clark
Helen Clark of New Zealand is the current Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. She was the country’s foreign minister between 1999 and 2008
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