When it endorsed Antonio Guterres as the ninth secretary general of the United Nations, the Security Council was a source of discontent for many. A lot of attention has been paid to the issue. Guterres is the ninth secretary general of the United Nations. Guterres was the most recent in a long line of male secretary generals and came from a prosperous Western country.
However, the Security Council has indeed promoted a leader with a strong network at the top level of the executive, is highly experienced within UN institutions, and has an impressive amount of experience working with non-governmental organizations around the world.
Guterres was the premier of Portugal, which is the EU’s southernmost country, between 1995 and 2002. He also headed the refugee agency of the United Nations for a decade, from 2005 until 2015. His tenure as the European prime minister spans the Yugoslav conflicts of succession as well as the 1995 EU expansions, where three states were added, as well as 2004, when the union expanded by an additional 10.
As the UN’s high refugee commissioner, Guterres dealt with humanitarian concerns related to the movement of refugees from sub-Saharan Africa as well as the migration between Asia and Africa. The serious work he did on refugee issues and human security, which affects people of all ages and continents, required him to work together with refugee committees, climate scientists, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Organisation for Migration, as well as other civic organizations. He was required to get details from the people in the field since there was no information in the different areas.
The job did not provide Guterres with as many discussions inside the halls of the Consilium Building in Brussels and the same kind of warm welcome to capital cities around the world as he did in the previous position and demanded a style similar to the work of an investigative. It’s safe to conclude that Guterres must be aware of the world that we live in internationally and more intimately than other former executives or ministers.
Guterres’s role in The mission of the UN was to ensure that refugees receive an opportunity to be part of the world. His work was carried out all over the world to confront governments that were closing their borders. This was a job he performed with a degree of honesty and integrity that was recognized at times even by an influential press that rarely is a fan of the UN.
Even if the election of one Mediterranean man was surprising and disturbing to many, considering that it was meant to be reserved for women from the Eastern European woman, perhaps it shouldn’t have been.
Refugee-related issues have reached the top of European as well as United States foreign policy agendas as a result of the Mediterranean refugee crisis. Migration is not a new phenomenon, and there are numerous reasons for migration, which include climate change, the war on the ground in Syria and other countries, political turmoil, and global inequality.
What the world requires right now is a seasoned expert with a thorough understanding of global politics and an ear for the capital cities of Europe, the continent that people want to relocate to most.
The UN has promoted a person from within its structure before, as in the case of Kofi Annan in 1997. Annan was an assistant and later the director of the peacekeeping mission, a position that another Mediterranean man gave, Boutros Boutros Ghali, in 1982.
Guterres is aware of the UN’s internal structures from the inside and doesn’t need to learn the nuances of the secretariat’s corridor political machinations through trial and mistake. This will enable him to follow his plan from the start.
His previous responsibilities have been centered around the most recent issues of globalization. He is fluent in many of the languages used by the European Union – and has expertise as a head state in negotiations with Brussels. He is the best competent to translate and explain global political issues to the EU’s various institutions as well as to other Western leaders.
Guterres might not be the ideal secretary general in 2016, but he’s the perfect person to fill the position in the current world of unlimited possibilities.
