Costa Rican former vice president Rebecca Greenspan, who is vying for the post of UN secretary general, criticized on Wednesday that the organization has become “conservative in terms of risks”, that it seems to avoid intervening, playing a role to end ongoing conflicts.
“Peace is under threat” at a time when “confidence in the organization is waning” and “time is running out to restore it,” Ms. Greenspan stressed during a three-hour hearing before representatives of member states.
“If I am elected general secretary, I will be a peacemaker. I will act before conflicts break out, I will be the first to pick up the phone. I will be where the wars are. I will talk to all parties,” he said. As a mediator “I will propose ten ideas” to resolve each conflict, “even if they fail I will accept the price of rejecting them and keep trying,” she continued.
“We have become a risk-averse organization,” he insisted.
The outgoing UN secretary-general, Portuguese diplomat Antonio Guterres, who will complete his second term on December 31, 2026, has been criticized by some observers for not taking initiatives to end wars, especially those in Ukraine and the Middle East.
“The UN only fails when it doesn’t try. We must try,” said Rebecca Greenspan, recalling that as the head of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (CNUCED in French, UNCTAD in English) she contributed to the negotiation in 2022 between Moscow and Kiev, the fruit of which was the “Black Sea Initiative”, to facilitate Ukrainian grain exports after the Russian military invasion.
Former Senegalese president Macky Sall, the last of the four candidates — the other two, who expressed their opinions the day before Tuesday, are former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and Argentine diplomat Mariano Grossi, head of the IAEA — who took the floor, argued in favor of “reinventing the role” of the UN secretary general so that he is “at the table” in global scale.
He also insisted on the inextricable link between peace and development, the “deepening inequalities” and the need to change the international economic architecture.
Asked about the absence of references to human rights in the letter with which he presented his candidacy, he assured that he pays “special attention” to them.
“It is clear that the promotion of human rights brings prosperity” to every country, he noted, as the current government in Senegal is accused of drowning in blood political demonstrations between 2021 and 2024, with non-governmental organizations speaking of dozens of deaths in the repression of this period.
Source: RES – BEE