Sunday Times 2
What is the world’s most “demanding and impossible job?”
View(s):By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS (IPS)— When Dr. Gamani Corea, a former Secretary-General of the Geneva-based UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), was holding court in the delegate’s lounge, I asked him what he thought of the bitter dispute between then Secretary-General (SG) Boutros Boutros-Ghali (1992-1996) and the United States over the Egyptian’s determination to win re-election for a second term.
Dr. Corea, a product of two prestigious universities, Oxford and Cambridge, and a one-time Sri Lankan Ambassador to the European Economic Community (EEC) in Brussels, pondered for a while, and declared: “I cannot really figure out why anyone in his right mind would ever want such a demanding job.”
And perhaps he was right.
Trygve Lie of Norway, the first UN Secretary-General, once remarked the SG’s job was “the most impossible job on this earth.”
Still, the post of SG, in contemporary history, has attracted at least three ranking officials from their country’s highest political hierarchies: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, acting Foreign Minister of Egypt, Secretary-General Ban ki-moon, a former Foreign Minister of South Korea and the current Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, a former Prime Minister of Portugal.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres: Persona Non-Grata in Israel
The SG, for all intents and purposes, is the UN’s Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) who is virtually subservient to 193 political leaders, including presidents, prime ministers, reigning monarchs, foreign ministers and even UN ambassadors.
But he has no means of implementing UN resolutions or a standing army to enforce them.
Guterres, who has taken a strong stand against the Russian invasion of Ukraine and publicly condemned the devastating killings of civilians in Gaza has come under fire, mostly from Israeli politicians and senior officials, who have not only called for his resignation but also declared him persona non grata (PNG), banning him from entering Israel.
Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, a former UN Under-Secretary-General and one-time Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the United Nations, told IPS the incumbent Secretary-General recently lamented to the media that “Well, it is absolutely true that the Secretary-General of the United Nations has very limited power, and it’s also absolutely true that he has very little capacity to mobilise financial resources. So, no power and no money.”
“That is the reality which every Secretary-General faces and has been aware of,” said Ambassador Chowdhury.
“That is also known generally to the people who follow the United Nations regularly and thoroughly understanding the functional complexity of the world’s largest multilateral apparatus. Why then this reality surfaces and is brought to public attention only when the UN leadership fails to carry out the mandated responsibilities?”
This “very limited power”, as worded by SG Guterres, should be highlighted as often as possible to avoid unnecessary and undue expectations of the global community about the UN and its top leadership.
“No Secretary-General has pointed out these limitations as he campaigned for the post and on assuming the office, he pointed out. Current SG Guterres was no exception. He would have been realistic and factual if he had pointed out the limitations—better termed as obstacles—to his leadership as he took office in 2017, and not in 2024 after being in office for nearly eight years.”
Irrespective of the major ongoing wars, the built-in operational weakness and inability of the world’s most important diplomat has always been there, said Ambassador Chowdhury, former Senior Special Adviser to UN General Assembly President (2011-2012) and President of the UN Security Council (2000 and 2001).
Ian G. Williams, President of the Foreign Press Association USA, told IPS it is time for the pandering to stop. Former Israeli Ambassador Gilad Erdan’s shredding of the UN Charter should have been be taken as Israeli abrogation of the Charter, but barring the Secretary General indicates that Israel has no part in the organisation, as should banning UNRWA and the threat to confiscate its assets in Jerusalem to build illegal settlements on occupied territory.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) got Al Capone for tax evasion—and now is the time for Israel to be squeezed out for its manifest procedural breaches of the UN Charter and Vienna Convention even the two veto holders cover for it on genocide, said Williams.
“Being declared PNG by Israel has probably saved Antonio Guterres’ reputation, which until now has been dimmed by his relative caution in addressing Israeli depredations. To be attacked by an enemy of mankind and international law is no bad thing”.
But now there should be follow-up, he pointed out.
“The membership of the United Nations should now be carving away at Israel’s membership prerogatives since, even if states are reluctant to act on the state’s egregious violations of international law, it has now clearly broken the basic rules of international diplomacy.”
“Will it take (Israeli Ambassador) Danny Danon dancing across the General Assembly podium with the SG’s head on a platter to provoke action? asked Williams, a former President of the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA).
Asked about the PNG declaration by Israel, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said: “We saw this announcement, which we see as a political statement by the Foreign Minister. And just one more attack, so to speak, on UN staff that we’ve seen from the government of Israel.”
“Look, this issue of PNG has been announced by different countries at different times towards a representative. And as we said every time, we do not recognise that the concept of persona non grata applies to UN staff,” he added.
Time and again, said Ambassador Chowdhury, “I have pointed out that “essentially there are four main constraints to the effectiveness of the Secretary-General”.
Firstly, veto and veto-wielding members of the Security Council, which influences matters in all areas of UN system’s work; secondly, promises and commitments made by the Secretary-General as a candidate to secure his election; thirdly, aspiration to get re-elected for a second term from day one of the first term; and, fourthly, the labyrinthine UN bureaucracy.
If the Charter needs to be amended to live up to the challenges of global complexities and paralysing intergovernmental politicisation, let us do that. It is high time to focus on that direction. Blindly treating the words of the Charter as sacrosanct may be self-defeating and irresponsible. The UN could be buried under its own rubble unless we set our house in order now, declared Chowdhury.
“I would also recommend that in future the Secretary-General would have only one term of seven years, as opposed to the current practice of automatically renewing the Secretary-General’s tenure for a second five-year term, without even evaluating his performance,” he noted.