Centrum Stosunków Międzynarodowych - 05 October 2016: Portugal's Guterres emerges as favorite to be next UN Secretary-General

Former Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Guterres is set to become the next United Nations secretary- general and replace South Korea's Ban Ki-moon. Guterres was the head on the UN refugee agency for ten years until he now emerged as the new favorite. Fifteen Council members agreed to put his name forward to a formal vote. The process to appoint the UN secretary - generally happens usually in a two- stage process. Hereby, a candidate is firstly, recommended by the Security Council and must secondly then be approved by the 193- member General Assembly. Thirteen candidates have been considered and the Security Council members could vote on each candidate by either selecting "encourage," "discourage" or "no opinion." Guterres received 13 "encourage" votes and two votes with "no opinion" and thus emerged as a new favorite.

Guterres stated clearly in his vision statement that the world has to face rising challenges in terms of inequality, terrorism, organized crime and climate change and he thinks the UN is the place to overcome those challenges.