U.N. SECRETARY GENERAL 1945-2006: 3 European men, 2 African men, 1 Latin American man, 1 Asian man, 0 Women as pointed out by Equality Now, which launched a campaign last year to support women candidates for the position of United Nations Secretary-General, noting:
Tradition has it that the post of Secretary-General should rotate so that each geographical region gets its”turn.”Women have never had a “turn,”. . .
It comes as no surprise that this tradition will continue when Kofi Annan completes his term as Secretary General. Based on an informal vote yesterday in the U.N. Security Council, Ban Ki Moon, South Korea’s Foreign Minister, is poised to become the next Secretary-General of the United Nations. The breakdown of straw votes shows that each of the remaining candidates was opposed by at least one permanent member of the Security Council (i.e. with veto power). The Security Council will hold a formal vote on Monday, Oct. 9, after which it will send its recommendation to the General Assembly for approval.
Although nations were urged to consider nominating women candidates (see e.g. this and this) only one female candidate emerged, Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the President of Latvia, who ran at the joint invitation of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. In her statement announcing her candidacy she said:
With my formal decision to run for the post of UN Secretary General I wish to encourage women all over the world to continue their efforts to challenge prejudices and stereotypes. Half of humankind has never been represented at the helm of the UN. It is time to change this practice, which fails to reflect the structure of the world population. At the same time I wish to emphasize that the world cannot be divided into female and male, and we all must join together to defend human values and make the world a better place.
A UN News Centre story on her candidacy appears here. In yesterday’s straw vote in the Security Council, Vike-Freiberga placed third among the six candidates, with two opposing votes from permanent members of the Council, undoubtedly Russia and China. Relations between Russia and Latvia are tense, and China has been insistent that it is Asia’s “turn”for the post of Secretary General, a position strongly supported by Russia and many other UN members. Thus far only one Asian has served as Secretary General, U Thant of Burma, who served from 1961 through 1971. Some have suggested that the Eastern Europeans have a turn, as all three European SGs have been from Western Europe, but this proposal never gained much steam. A number of Asian women were among those listed as potential candidates for the post of Secretary General, including Singapore’s ambassador to the U.S., Chan Heng Chee but they did not have the support of governments to run for the post.
– Stephanie Farrior
