You don’t know? OK, I’ll give you a hint. The leader is the Secretary General of the United Nations (UN). “What is a Secretary General?” you ask. Well, technically the Secretary General is the UN’s chief administrative officer. More to the point, the Secretary General is the individual primarily responsible for the organization. He is – the position has never been held by a woman – the leader of the UN because he is the only one who personifies it and, occasionally, steers it in one or another direction.
Which brings me back to my question – who leads the United Nations? Not in the least surprised that you still don’t know that since 2017, the Secretary General has been Antonio Guterres. Before that, from 1995 to 2002, Guterres was prime minister of Portugal and then, before he became Secretary General, he was UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
No question that the United Nations continues to do good work. Its various agencies coordinate humanitarian aid around the world; same with multiple health initiatives. There is similarly no question that as a peacemaker – as a hub for high power negotiations between and among nations – its effectiveness, such as it ever was, has dwindled to near zero.
The UN never lived up to its original aspirations. But under the only two strong secretary generals it ever had – Sweden’s Dag Hammarskjold (1953-1961) and Ghana’s Kofi Annan (1997-2006) – it did play a prominent and intermittently effective role on the international stage.
No longer. Under Guterres and his other predecessors, the UN’s impact on world affairs is scant. The organization is not an embarrassment, but increasingly it is irrelevant. During his recent visit to the United States, China’s President Xi Jinping bypassed it entirely. (His only stop was at the White House.) And for all the hubbub in New York last week, at the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, the organization is widely seen as described by the New York Times. As “faltering, dysfunctional, and largely ineffectual.”
Again, in some ways and on some occasions the UN plays a positive part. But hard to argue that despite the best efforts of smart and well-intentioned men like Guterres, time is running out on the organization.
By the end of this year the UN General Assembly will have selected his successor. Whoever he or she is, their formal authority will not increase. Which makes it of paramount importance that the next Secretary General have the personal power to seize the organization, to wake it up and to shake it up. To prevent its decline to decrepitude the UN’s next leader must have the personal will and political skill to breathe life into the honorable role that it was intended to play.
Organizations cannot thrive or even survive without a leader. When the leaders that they have lack institutional resources, they must have personal resources to make a difference. Without either the former or the latter they are destined to be marginalized – and their organizations are doomed permanently to be sidelined.