How Many Women Will Be Running for the Post of UN Secretary-General in 2025? | Geneva Conventions: Interview with International Law Scholar Andrew Clapham

Interview with Brazilian Minister Counsellor at the UN in NY, Viviane Rios Balbino, on her book on the history of women in peace and security + Week Ahead + Geneva Conventions + OECD e-gov advisory.

How Many Women Will Be Running for the Post of UN Secretary-General in 2025?

That is the trillion dollar question. Do you know? Who is in line?

Subscribe to THE UN BRIEF to get the inside scoop, we map-out the politics and policies of the organization that is meant to make the world a better place for everyone.

Think that the UN does not impact your day-to-day life? Think again, so many of the standards and rules and regulations that you abide to started as a negotiation or a working group, or a consultation at the UN, or one of its agencies or many bodies.

From how the Security Council protects your civil and political rights through enforcement of the Geneva Conventions, to how it nudges countries to respect the rule of law (through the work of the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva), to how safely you can cross a street (ITU standards on semaphores at crossroads), to how the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control led to the worldwide smoking ban on restaurants and other public spaces.

And if that does not convince you remember that your elected officials will be the ones choosing who will be running the UN bodies, negotiating peace and war at the Security Council, and droning for economic development in the interminable sessions at the General Assembly. The many UN bodies and agencies that have as their mandate peace and security, and economic development, are mostly run by appointees of new administrations. Besides the UN is yours, you pay for it, it is your taxpayer money that funds the UN. The UN is not a “world government”, it is the “world of governments”. Big difference.

When I worked at the UN Secretariat News and Media Division in the early 2000s there was a slogan in our newly minted UN website. “It is Your World”. We used to joke that the tagline should be “It is your world. You really messed it up.” We needed some comic relief.

There was so much sadness and horror from watching and reading the daily reports by UN colleagues on the ground in Iraq, and in Sub-Saharan Africa, about the atrocities of war. We had high-level government officials come to the Security Council to beg for sanctions to be lifted, or dispute reports of war crimes, of gross violations of women’s rights, of war lords commanding children to kill, traumatizing them for life. Reports that were too damning to be erased from memory.

It was also disheartening to listen the US administration at the time, led by George W. Bush, gaslight American voters about the need to start another war. And the waves of violence in the Middle East were not comforting either, the attacks on American soil on that crispy Autumn morning in New York gave one pause.

The Best of Intentions

Often I hear that the UN is attempting to rule the world, that it is trying to replace government and become the world’s government. These criticisms and misunderstandings come from the illiterate, but not only, that think they do not need international cooperation. Climate change, and the pervasiveness of new and emerging tech impacting the world of work is changing that.

The UN is not a world government (they are not that clever), kidding, there are brilliant minds within the confines of the mostly empty buildings at the Palais des Nations in Geneva and at the UN Headquarters in New York, as well as spread throughout the globe in the different regional offices and humanitarian agencies outposts. (Check our past interviews and subscribe, we interview top UN officials and diplomats serving their countries at the UN).

The UN is not a *World Government* it is the *World of Governments* and therein lies its many shortcomings, and I mean it in the sense that Western governments right now are battling a fragmentation of values.

They face a democracy vortex where anti-democratic forces, as well as anti-international cooperation forces within states and non-state actors — and I can’t believe I have to say that, but that is where we are — think we can forge a path out of the climate crisis and the multiple conflicts by bombarding each other out, ignoring the scientific evidence, and using AI hype to confuse citizens.

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In this edition you will find:

1. Interview with International Law Scholar Andrew Clapham

2. Interview with Carlos Santiso, OECD, Head of Digital

3. Interview with Brazilian Diplomat Viviane Rios Balbino

4. Week Ahead in Geneva