19 June 2006, New York - A meeting was held on Friday, 16 June, to discuss the UN Secretary-General (SG) Selection campaign, with representatives of the World Federalist Movement (WFM), CARE, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO), and the Security Council Report. We discussed several topics related to the selection process and hope that you will take this opportunity to share your thoughts on a few central questions.

In light of India’s recent nomination of Shashi Tharoor as candidate for SG, we discussed whether there is or should be a need for candidates to take a leave of absence from current posts while campaigning. What are possible conflicts of interest when civil servants are running for the SG post? Further, we considered allegations of government money being used by at least one candidate to secure support from Security Council member states.

Another area for discussion is the number of candidates the Security Council should submit to the General Assembly (GA). Before Tharoor’s nomination, India circulated a draft resolution at a meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) proposing a change to the 1946 GA resolution. Instead of requiring the Security Council to give the GA only 1 name for approval, this proposal would have at least two candidates sent to the GA for consideration.

One implication of submitting multiple candidates is that the GA will vote to choose one, which means that numbers will become decisive. The G-77 and NAM will have sway. A concern was expressed that as indicated in the current negotiations on management reform, the G-77 countries oppose enhancement of the authority of the SG and regard the SG as more of a managerial post than a leadership role. It must thus be expected that if more than one candidate is submitted to the GA, the candidate with a stronger profile as a manager will win. However, one non-G-77 government believes that if a candidate is convincingly independent from powerful member states, the G-77 and NAM may be willing to support management reforms that give the SG more authority, as well as a SG candidate with a strong leadership appeal.

A point was also made for the vote trading that is almost certain to happen. If the GA is to select between several candidates, there is a higher risk of conflicts of interest for candidates who are currently civil servants, because of the much greater number of Member States in the GA, and also because the number of countries dependent on donor countries is higher in the GA than in the Security Council. Currently the candidates may feel the need to lobby only fifteen states – those on the Security Council – or even just the permanent five.

Lastly, a participant reported that one government was concerned that multiple candidates would split regional groups; however, this is only an issue if the focus is on a single region. If multiple regions proposed names, a larger span of candidates would be produced. The risk of this scenario is that the ‘race’ would become a competition between regions rather than an evaluation of the relative quality of the candidates.

We had a very interesting discussion on these issues which lead to more questions than answers. We thus invite you to add to the discussion by considering these questions:

Would the more-than-one-candidate model lead to more transparency in the selection process?

How to best address the question of a conflict of interest for civil servants?

Please send your answers and any other comments to info@UNSGselection.org.