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  • In October 2016, the United Nations elected its 9th Secretary General - Antonio Guterres

  • of Portugal.

  • The position has been described asthe hardest in the world’, but what exactly

  • does the UN Secretary General do?

  • Well, the Secretary General is the leader and de facto spokesperson of the United Nations.

  • According to the UN Charter, this means leading most meetings, creating an annual report and

  • addressing the security council on matters thatthreaten international peace and security."

  • Beyond this, the job actually has few official duties and as a result, every Secretary General

  • has interpreted it differently.

  • For instance some act asworld moderators”, which is to say, the diplomatic mediator in

  • international disputes.

  • In fact when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was creating the UN, this is how he envisioned

  • the Secretary General’s role.

  • One example of a “moderator”-type was Secretary General Kofi Annan, who prioritized

  • human rights and the spread of HIV while in office from 1997 to 2006.

  • By comparison, Annan’s successor, Ban Ki Moon, has been more of an administrator-type,

  • overseeing the UN but with little input about what its moral obligations should be.

  • Not only is the job of the Secretary General open to interpretation, but so is the appointment

  • process.

  • The UN Charter’s only stipulation is that the five-member UN Security Council recommend

  • a candidate to the General Assembly, all 193 of which vote to approve.

  • Traditionally, the Security Council’s process of narrowing down officials has occurred behind

  • closed doors.

  • However amid calls for transparency in 2016, the General Assembly began holding open hearings

  • and Q&A’s.

  • And they can do this, because the UN Charter doesn’t actually specify how the body should

  • choose a candidate, nor does it say what type of person should be chosen or the length of

  • their tenure.

  • That said, there are a few unofficial norms.

  • Secretary Generals tend to be career diplomats from neutral, small to medium sized countries,

  • like Peru or Sweden.

  • Although there is no formal limit on how many times a person can be appointed to the position,

  • no Secretary General has exceeded two 5-year terms.

  • This is all somewhat straightforward, so why is the Secretary General’s job purportedly

  • so difficult?

  • Well, the Secretary General’s day-to-day is heavily shaped by caution and judgement,

  • as they must take into account the concerns of the UN’s member states while acting as

  • an impartial moral authority.

  • In fact, one of the most crucial aspects of the job is acting as an intermediary in high-stakes

  • international disputes.

  • Take Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld, who was tasked with forging peace between

  • Israel and Arab States during the 1950’s Suez Crisis, or Javier Perez de Cuellar, who

  • brokered the ceasefire that ended the Iran-Iraq war in 1988.

  • Many in the UN are hoping that its new Secretary General, Antonio Guterres will use his experience

  • serving as the organization’s High Commissioner for Refugees to be a powerful leader in the

  • face of the migrant crisis.

  • This is why the Secretary General’s role is often described through juxtaposition:

  • they must be a diplomat and advocate, activist and bureaucrat, world moderator and chief

  • administrator, even Secretary and General.

  • Experts say Guterres will not only have to mediate world conflicts, but the UN itself,

  • as the organization becomes increasingly divided on issues such as the Syrian Civil War.

  • When Guterres assumes this powerful but ambiguous position in January, there’s no doubt he

  • will face some daunting global challenges.

In October 2016, the United Nations elected its 9th Secretary General - Antonio Guterres

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聯合國祕書長到底在做什麼? (What Does The UN Secretary-General Actually Do?)

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    林鼎傑 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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