UN Town Hall: The Next Secretary-General

Executive Summary

Six candidates to succeed António Guterres took the same stage for ninety minutes — the last large public, comparative event before the Security Council's closed-door straw polls. On the diagnosis they agreed almost completely: the UN faces a crisis of trust that shows up as a crisis of cash, reform is imperative, and multilateralism is being eroded by great-power rivalry. Very little separated them on what is wrong.

There is significant variance, though, in what each candidate thinks the office can actually do about it, and in how far they concede it cannot. That variance falls into three groups, according to where each locates the Secretary-General's power:

Candidate	Theory of the office	Where they locate the leverage
Rebeca Grynspan	Broker	Direct negotiation with the parties, including hostile ones. Argues from the Black Sea grain agreement, and would build machinery for it inside her own office.
Rafael Mariano Grossi	Broker	The same, from the IAEA's inspector presence at Zaporizhzhia and the ceasefires that sustained it. Credibility comes from arriving with workable solutions.
Macky Sall	Broker	The same, from his wartime trips to Sochi and Kyiv as African Union chair: permanent contact must stay open whatever the tension.
Michelle Bachelet	Convener	The UN's ability to seat governments, industry, academia and technologists at one table and set rules there.
María Fernanda Espinosa	Convener	Convening, partnering and advocacy — with a prevention and early-action hub as the thing she would build first.
Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett	Administrator	Running the Secretariat well, and equipping member states with neutral information so they can take the structural decisions that are theirs.

Colour key — each candidate keeps their group colour throughout this readout: Broker — Grynspan, Grossi, Sall Convener — Bachelet, Espinosa Administrator — Rodrigues Birkett

A second divide cuts across the first, and it is the one most likely to be tested in the straw polls: how candidly a candidate admits the office is constrained. Grossi sits at one end, declining to promise anything and warning that reform talk is cheap — "everybody's a reformer now." Espinosa puts a number on the problem, saying 72 member states had not paid their dues. Bachelet and Rodrigues Birkett answer constraint questions mainly by asserting persistence.

What Was Asked, and the Process Around It

The President of the General Assembly, Annalena Baerbock, opened by framing the choice as one about custodianship of the Charter and its three pillars, and said the point of one shared stage was to hear how each would define principled leadership, reform the organisation, and represent the world's eight billion people. The moderators, Haslinda Amin and Romaine Bostick of Bloomberg, ran a hard clock: several candidates were cut off mid-sentence, and where a position is truncated in the record this readout says so rather than completing the thought.

Where this sits in the selection. The Secretary-General is appointed by the 193-member General Assembly on the Security Council's recommendation, where any permanent member can block a candidate. Straw polls — informal, unrecorded votes marking each candidate as encourage, discourage or no opinion — were expected from the end of July 2026, a recommendation in September, and the appointment later in the year. The next Secretary-General takes office on 1 January 2027. This town hall is therefore the last major moment with the candidates' positions on the public record side by side, before the decisive phase moves behind closed doors.

The questions came in three rounds. Each opened with one question put to all six candidates, then moved to individually targeted questions — some from the moderators, some from the floor.

Round 1 — Crisis and conflict

To all six: the Strait of Hormuz crisis closed a critical shipping lane and the Security Council could not adopt a resolution. What keeps the UN meaningful when diplomacy inside the Council fails?

Candidate	Individual question	What they answered
Michelle Bachelet	Gaza, and what to do when moral authority is not enough	Moral authority is always needed but must be paired with tools. Pressed for a mechanism, she named Article 99, and Uniting for Peace as the Assembly's route when the Council is deadlocked — plus field presence and building allies who can shift an outcome.
Macky Sall	What he would champion without Security Council backing	The Charter gives the office a facilitator role and an early-warning function; he would use quiet, preventive diplomacy and speak to belligerents, permanent members included. Asked how, he pointed to meeting Putin and travelling to Sochi and Kyiv as African Union chair when few supported it.
Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett	Making the Council effective when it is paralysed by vetoes	There is always space for the Secretary-General. Drawing on her own Council service, she would use the office's neutrality and the UN's field footprint to put concrete proposals to members: the Council may not act today but may act next week on that recommendation.
María Fernanda Espinosa	Reorganising the UN so climate is cross-cutting, not environmental	Noted more than 14 senior officials work on climate without working together. Called climate a symptom of consumption and production patterns, and the core problem one of implementation rather than knowledge — the agreements and technologies already exist. Asked which division she would break first, she named the link between climate, conflict and the human-rights pillar.
Rafael Mariano Grossi	First steps when a permanent member wages a war of aggression	Any member starting a war is serious enough for the Secretary-General to step in, permanent member or not. First restore the UN's credibility as a valid interlocutor, then use the Charter's tools — starting with talking and listening, and treating the conflict realistically by examining why force was used.
Rebeca Grynspan	The Sahel, climate security and locally-rooted peacebuilding	Climate is becoming a peace and security issue, with most displacement now climate-driven. The UN is unique but not alone: it should partner with regional and local organisations that have people on the ground. On local ownership, the real reform is at country level — the UN is supply-driven when it should be demand-driven.

Round 2 — UN reform and leadership

To all six: at the end of a first term, what would governments and people say the UN does better than it does today?

Candidate	Individual question	What they answered
Rafael Mariano Grossi	Influence versus authority — an example of using persuasion	The IAEA established the only independent multilateral presence in a theatre of war, at Zaporizhzhia, and negotiated six Russia–Ukraine ceasefires to allow essential repairs. His conclusion: that is only possible through credibility, and by arriving at the real table with viable solutions.
Michelle Bachelet	A major donor threatening funding over criticism of it	She would speak. At UN Women a donor threatened to pull all its funding; she acted anyway, it did, and she sought funds elsewhere. As High Commissioner she was likewise pressed not to release documents and released them — independence being the only basis on which all 193 members can feel represented.
Rebeca Grynspan	What she would protect at all costs under financial pressure	Rejected the premise — opening with what to cut is the worst way to negotiate. Would build on the Assembly's liquidity decision and protect the Charter and three pillars while becoming more agile. Pressed on unprecedented arrears: the priority is a stable financial path, since an organisation that cannot predict its income cannot be strategic.
Macky Sall	Preserving independence from the permanent five	His record already shows independence, and his diplomacy excludes no one. The liquidity crisis conceals a crisis of trust for which reform is the pretext; he would open the organisation's accounts and reform proposals to all member states — after which it is for each to meet its obligations.
María Fernanda Espinosa	Which Security Council reform she would champion	Better working methods and effectiveness, including a larger role for the Secretary-General as honest broker and provider of options and scenarios. On composition she declined to take a side: reform is entirely in member states' hands and the office's job is secretariat support. Asked directly about an African permanent seat, she said the Secretary-General has no role backing any particular position.
Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett	Staff morale, managerial efficiency and accountability	Would continue the Secretariat reform already begun, using technology. A Secretary-General is only as strong as the team around her; member states want a Secretariat that looks like the world it represents, making under- and unrepresented countries a priority. Change brings trepidation, and she hopes to be a motivator through it.

Round 3 — Global challenges and opportunities

To all six: many of the world's most consequential decisions are made by private companies rather than governments. What role should the Secretary-General play toward powerful private actors?

Candidate	Individual question	What they answered
Rebeca Grynspan	Trade shaped by geopolitics, and economic fragmentation	In a multipolar world without multilateralism, fragmentation follows — she treats multipolarity and multilateralism as one question, not two. Asked what would change powerful states' behaviour, she pointed to trade proving more resilient than predicted, because regional agreements and integration kept setting workable rules even as trade was weaponised globally.
Rafael Mariano Grossi	Whether the UN should set global rules for autonomous weapons	Argued against an IAEA-for-AI: frontier models are built diffusely across jurisdictions, making a top-down, over-normative approach extremely difficult. Wants a collaborative platform to agree behavioural rules without stifling innovation, keeping a human in the loop. Nuclear-style verification would be an illusion, since IAEA safeguards rest on the material balance of tangible things.
Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett	The unlearned lesson of COVID-19, and the next pandemic	Stressed preparedness: many countries never recovered, and the pandemic set back the Sustainable Development Goals. Existing mechanisms, the WHO included, leave the world better prepared — but without financing and vaccine access it would again be survival of the fittest. On vaccine hoarding, the Secretary-General would have to use her voice, though this needs all members' cooperation.
María Fernanda Espinosa	Selling climate adaptation finance as investment, not aid	Wealthy nations should not need convincing: the evidence already shows adaptation reduces migration and protects livelihoods and prosperity. Called for rebalancing investment between mitigation and adaptation and resilience. The mechanisms exist; what is missing is implementation and political will, which the Secretary-General is well placed to drive for vulnerable countries.
Macky Sall	Reforming the global financial architecture and the debt burden	Would launch a global discussion on reforming the international financial architecture. The burden is not the size of developing countries' debt but its terms — borrowing costs five to eight times higher than developed countries pay. Credit rating agencies belong in that discussion alongside member states and the financial institutions, with private finance mobilised and its risks mitigated.
Michelle Bachelet	Prioritising and funding the human-rights pillar	Has seen firsthand how central human rights are to preventing conflict and to peacebuilding, and would speak up when appropriate. Would strengthen coordination among agencies working on human rights in the field, resist cuts to a chronically underfunded pillar — she put the High Commissioner's share of the regular budget in the low single digits — and mobilise voluntary contributions.

A closing all-candidate question asked for the greatest threat facing the world's peoples, and each candidate then had two minutes on their first hundred days. Those closing lists are specific enough to be checked later, and are set out in the ledger below.

Areas of Consensus

The agreed ground is unusually wide. Everything here was stated by all six candidates or by all but one.

Reform is imperative, and the goal is leaner without being weaker. Bachelet's formulation — a UN that is leaner "but muscled" — is close to what the others describe in their own words.
The money crisis is a trust crisis. Grynspan ties the financial crisis directly to the organisation's political one; Sall says it conceals a crisis of trust and would open the accounts to every member state; Espinosa gives the figure of 72 member states in arrears and reads it as a message about confidence, not a cash-flow problem alone.
A deadlocked Security Council is where the Secretary-General's job begins, not where it ends. All six answered the Hormuz question this way, with Rodrigues Birkett putting it most bluntly: the office does not have the luxury of not trying.
Impartiality has to be perceived, not merely asserted. Espinosa draws the distinction explicitly; Grossi calls impartiality one of the hardest parts of the job and separates it from indifference.
Security Council reform belongs to member states. Espinosa refuses to endorse an African permanent seat on the grounds that the Secretary-General has no role taking sides on composition; Rodrigues Birkett draws the same line between Secretariat reform, which is the SG's, and structural reform, which is not.
Senior appointments on competence with gender and geographical balance. Named in the closing statements by Sall, Rodrigues Birkett, Espinosa and Bachelet.
Climate belongs in the peace and security conversation. Espinosa, Grynspan, Bachelet and Sall each link climate to conflict, displacement or food insecurity.
AI needs cooperation that includes industry, science and civil society, without smothering innovation. Unanimous as a goal; the method is contested (see the fault lines).
Development finance must reach developing countries on fairer terms. Sall and Rodrigues Birkett both work through the international financial institutions; Espinosa and Grynspan emphasise investment, capital access and adaptation finance.

Fault Lines

Four divides run through the debate. Because the candidates share a diagnosis, every one is about method rather than goal — the honest reading of this record. Each names the poles and who anchors them; fuller positions are in the reference grid.

1. Where the office's power lies — the defining divide, and the one that predicts what each would build first.

Brokers

GrynspanAnchors the pole and would build machinery for it: a good-offices support unit inside the Executive Office — a small, agile team at the highest political level. Says the same could have been attempted early at Hormuz.
GrossiInsists credibility comes from arriving with viable solutions at what he calls the real table rather than the imaginary one.
SallOffers his wartime travel as African Union chair as proof that permanent contact must be maintained whatever the tension.

Conveners

BacheletCalls the UN uniquely suited to seat governments, industry, academia and technologists together and produce what she calls a smart mix of measures.
EspinosaAlmost the same verbs — convene, partner, advocate — but would build a prevention and early-action hub rather than a mediation unit.

Administrator

Rodrigues BirkettPuts the weight on the Secretariat itself and on supplying member states with neutral information for the structural decisions. She argues for good offices too, but her first-order lever is the institution, not the negotiating table.

2. What reform means — a new business model, completing the current one, or a word to distrust.

Structural

GrynspanSharpest of the three: cutting costs without a vision of change only makes the organisation weaker. Would go after the incentives driving duplication and unhealthy competition, reforming from the top and not only the bottom (full quote below).
EspinosaWants to move from budget cuts and agency mergers to a new business model built on impact, performance and accountability.
SallAims at a different target: member states' own working methods, citing roughly 40,000 active mandates and more than 27,000 annual meetings.

Continuity

Rodrigues BirkettWould carry the reform already under way through to delivery, using technology, and expects results visible on the ground within a first term.
BacheletFrames her version as deepening and accelerating reforms that combine efficiency with effectiveness.

Sceptical of the word

GrossiAlone treats reform rhetoric as the problem, warning that everybody is a reformer now and the test comes on 1 January (full quote below). He calls for brutal honesty and a new deal between the Secretary-General and both the membership and the staff.

Worth noting inside the structural camp: Grynspan and Espinosa aim at the Secretariat's incentives, Sall aims at the member states' mandate load. Those are different reforms wearing the same label.

3. How candid to be about constraint — the axis member states are most likely to test.

High candour

GrossiRepeatedly separates what falls within the Secretary-General's mandate from what sits with the membership, and says a hundred days may not be enough.
EspinosaNames the arrears figure and states that Security Council reform is entirely in member states' hands.
SallSays that without member states, reforms will be timid regardless of the Secretary-General's will.

Between the two

GrynspanRejected the moderator's premise that she must choose what to cut, while being precise about the numbers behind the liquidity problem: candid on facts, agency-forward on strategy.

Agency-forward

BacheletAnswers constraint questions primarily through persistence and presence — the office cannot give up, must keep trying. Concrete elsewhere, but leads with will rather than limits.
Rodrigues BirkettThe same: the Secretary-General does not have the luxury of not trying. Her realism appears in the reform detail rather than in how she frames the office's limits.

4. How to govern AI — build an institution or build a platform.

Against the institutional analogue

GrossiThe only candidate to argue against the obvious model, and he argues against his own agency: a collaborative platform for agreeing behavioural rules, not an IAEA for AI (full quote below). Pressed on verifying autonomous weapons, he called a nuclear-style regime an illusion, because IAEA verification rests on the material balance of tangible things.

Multistakeholder convening

GrynspanNames the approach polylateralism and would bring technologists, scientists, industry and civil society into the room.
BacheletWants clear rules binding governments and industry alike, alongside measures that keep innovation moving.
EspinosaPuts it as making human dignity the source code of new technology.

Through the membership

Rodrigues BirkettWould trust the combined wisdom of the 193 to produce a governance framework, and is the only candidate to frame the risk in terms of what young people fear: that AI takes their jobs and kills their creativity.

Outliers and single-candidate items — things only one candidate said.

GrossiThe only candidate who declines to promise, closing on a warning about reform theatre rather than a list of deliverables.
GrynspanThe only one to refuse a moderator's framing outright. Also the only one to diagnose the UN as supply-driven rather than demand-driven, with headquarters walling the field off from member states.
BacheletThe only one to answer the donor-pressure question with an instance of having paid the price (full quote below), and the only one to name Article 99 and Uniting for Peace as specific tools for a deadlocked Council.
EspinosaThe only one to quantify non-payment, and the only one to make the generational gap her headline threat: nearly half of humanity is under 30, while the institutions shaping their future are designed, led and governed by previous generations.
Rodrigues BirkettThe only one to connect this office to the beyond-GDP agenda, naming the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index as a lever for concessional financing. Also the only one to raise under- and unrepresented countries in staffing, and to say plainly that a woman as Secretary-General can deliver.
SallThe only one to put member states' own working methods at the centre of reform, and the only one to close on an extended metaphor, comparing the organisation to an organ whose many pipes need an organist to play in harmony.

Fault-Line Plot — Cluster Map

How to read this plot. The X-axis is fixed to the defining divide — where the candidate locates the Secretary-General's power (convener → broker → administrator; these are kinds, not a scale, so left-to-right carries no ranking). Choose a fault-line dimension below for the Y-axis. Each dot is one candidate; colour repeats the X-axis grouping. Hover a dot for that candidate's summary. These are personal programmes, not national positions, and they reflect the 23 July 2026 town hall only.

Y axis — fault-line dimension

The First-100-Days Ledger

Each candidate named their priorities for a first hundred days. These answers are the most checkable thing the town hall produced: specific enough that whoever is appointed can be held to them in 2027. Listed in speaking order.

Candidate	Stated first-100-days priorities
Macky Sall	Build a senior team on competence, diversity and geographical balance. Strengthen peace and security capacity through preventive diplomacy, early warning, mediation, good offices and closer cooperation with regional organisations on peace operations. Launch an operational review of structures and mandates, and consultations with member states on reform including the UN80 process. Work on the liquidity crisis alongside accountability and transparency. Begin consultations on the post-2030 agenda with member states, the Bretton Woods institutions, the private sector, civil society and philanthropy.
Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett	Deploy a senior team balanced by geography and gender. Advance Secretariat reform and supply member states with neutral information for the structural decisions that are theirs. Push on conflict prevention and resolution using mediation and good offices. Tackle impediments to humanitarian delivery. Begin work on under- and unrepresented countries in staffing. Open discussions with the international financial institutions on concessional financing, using the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index and beyond-GDP work.
Rebeca Grynspan	Return peacemaking to the centre and establish a good-offices support unit in the Executive Office. Engage member states, the Security Council and conflict parties from day one. Build an integrated planning structure for peace and security, more demand-driven and more partnered with regional organisations. Carry the UN80 process beyond cost-cutting by reforming incentives and reforming from the top as well as the bottom. Put the finances on a stable footing, and treat communication and credibility as part of mandate delivery.
Rafael Mariano Grossi	Declines to give a list, arguing a hundred days will show whether the organisation means business rather than deliver everything. Would open a different dialogue — a new deal between the Secretary-General and member states, and between the Secretary-General, the Secretariat and staff — with brutal honesty about what is achievable, separating what falls to the office from what falls to the membership, and testing the membership's real level of ambition.
María Fernanda Espinosa	Appoint a high-quality cabinet and reformed executive office on competence and integrity. Focus on reform implementation and financial stability, moving the UN80 process from budget cuts and mergers toward a new business model based on impact, performance and accountability. Be visible where crises are, make prevention an operating principle rather than a slogan, and establish a prevention and early-action hub early. Restore dialogue with the organisation's staff.
Michelle Bachelet	Appoint senior management on competence and integrity with gender and geographical balance. Engage member states early on management challenges and on deepening and accelerating reform toward a leaner but not weaker UN, working with staff as well as states. Seek financial stability through assessed and voluntary contributions. Review the institutional and financial tools available under Chapter VI to strengthen peacemaking and peacebuilding, and pursue increased finance for development and climate action.

Talking Points

These quotes were checked against the meeting audio (English channel) on 27 July 2026 and match the recording; two were corrected from the ASR text where the machine transcript had dropped or garbled words. Still an ASR transcript, not an official UN record. Sall's words additionally passed through French-to-English interpretation.

"The blockade of the Security Council is when the job of the Secretary-General starts, because precisely is to open the possibilities for agreement."
— Rebeca Grynspan, anchoring the broker pole; she goes on to cite the Black Sea grain agreement as the worked example

"One thing the Secretary-General does not have the luxury of doing, and that is not trying. The Secretary-General must try, and I would be that Secretary-General that would try."
— Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, on a Council that cannot agree

"Impartiality is one of the most difficult traits of the job of the Secretary-General, which is not indifference, it is having the ability to put forward conclusions, concrete solutions, to listen, not to condemn, to be there to solve a problem."
— Rafael Mariano Grossi, on the core asset of the office

"There was this donor who came and said, if you do that, I will take all your funds. I did it because that was what needed to be done. It took all the funds off, but we tried to find other funds."
— Michelle Bachelet, asked what she would do if a major donor demanded softer criticism; recalling her time as Executive Director of UN Women

"Cutting costs is not enough. Without a vision of change, that only will make us weaker. I will reform how incentives work, tackle the behavior that drives duplication and unhealthy competition, and we also have to reform from the top, not only from the bottom."
— Rebeca Grynspan, the sharpest statement of structural reform

"When it comes to reform, of course, important. Everybody's a reformer now. Let's see what happens on January 1st."
— Rafael Mariano Grossi, the debate's most pointed line about reform rhetoric

"Today, 72 member states have not yet paid their dues to the organization. This is, of course, not only a financial issue. I think it is a message that we need to regain trust of member states."
— María Fernanda Espinosa, the only candidate to put a number on it

"There are certain guardrails that can be applied, but we have to be extremely careful. Some people say that we need an IAEA for AI… we are going to need a collaborative platform to define together what are the certain behavioral rules that we may agree on in order not to stifle innovation that we all need and to avoid that we lose the more important factor, human in the loop."
— Rafael Mariano Grossi, arguing against the institutional model his own agency represents

"The main challenge for we the people is the belief that might is right. It's the weakening of international law and humanitarian law. It's the erosion of the belief that founded this organization, that was the great power thought that they needed restraint."
— Rebeca Grynspan, on the greatest threat

"Today the liquidity crisis in reality is hiding a crisis of trust and the pretext is reform. So I would open— I'd be open book, I would open the accounts of the organization."
— Macky Sall, on preserving independence from the permanent five (interpreted from French)

"Our responsibility is to make the UN relevant again, to deliver, to touch the hearts and souls of people on the ground, to serve people on the ground, and not to confuse activity with impact."
— María Fernanda Espinosa, closing

"We have the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index and work has already started on going beyond GDP, but how do we use the MVI, for example, to work on concessional financing for the most vulnerable countries."
— Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, the only candidate to bring the beyond-GDP agenda into this debate

Reference: Candidates at a Glance

Showing 6 of 6

Rebeca Grynspan

Costa Rica · Secretary-General of UNCTAD; former Vice-President of Costa Rica

Broker · Structural reform

Council deadlock is where the job starts; cites the Black Sea grain agreement and would create a good-offices support unit in her own executive office. Reform must change incentives, not just cut costs, and from the top as well as the bottom. Diagnoses the UN as supply-driven rather than demand-driven, with headquarters walling the field off from member states. Refused the premise that she must name cuts. Calls the multistakeholder approach polylateralism. Names "might is right" and the erosion of great-power restraint as the central threat.

Rafael Mariano Grossi

Argentina · Director General, International Atomic Energy Agency

Broker · Sceptical of reform talk

Argues from the IAEA's inspector presence at Zaporizhzhia and six negotiated ceasefires; credibility means arriving with viable solutions at the real table. Impartiality is the hardest trait and is not indifference. The only candidate who declines to promise a hundred-day list, warning that everybody is a reformer now. Wants a new deal with member states and with staff, and brutal honesty about what the office can do. On AI, rejects an IAEA-style body and nuclear-style verification in favour of a collaborative platform keeping a human in the loop.

Macky Sall

Senegal · Former President of Senegal; former Chairperson of the African Union and of ECOWAS

Broker · Structural reform

Offers permanent contact whatever the tension, citing his wartime trips to Sochi and Kyiv as African Union chair. Says the liquidity crisis hides a crisis of trust, and would open the organisation's accounts to every member state in response. Targets member states' own working methods — roughly 40,000 active mandates, more than 27,000 annual meetings. On private actors, redirects to reforming the global financial architecture, borrowing costs and credit rating agencies. Spoke in French; text is interpreted.

Michelle Bachelet

Chile · Former President of Chile; former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; former Executive Director of UN Women

Convener · Continuity reform

The Secretary-General as convener, with the UN uniquely able to seat governments, industry, academia and technologists together behind a smart mix of rules and innovation. Wants a leaner but muscled UN. The only candidate to answer the donor-pressure question with a case where she acted and lost the funding. Names Article 99 and Uniting for Peace as tools when the Council is deadlocked, and would review Chapter VI instruments for peacemaking. On human rights, notes the tiny share of the regular budget reaching the High Commissioner's office.

María Fernanda Espinosa

Ecuador · Former President of the UN General Assembly; former Minister of Foreign Affairs and of Defence

Convener · Structural reform

Convene, partner, advocate — and be perceived as an honest broker rather than merely claiming impartiality. Would move the UN80 process from cuts and mergers to a new business model built on impact, performance and accountability, and build a prevention and early-action hub. The only candidate to quantify arrears at 72 member states. Declines to back any particular Security Council composition, calling that entirely a member-state matter. Makes the generational gap her headline threat and warns against confusing activity with impact.

Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett

Guyana · Permanent Representative of Guyana to the United Nations; former Minister

Administrator · Continuity reform

The Secretary-General does not have the luxury of not trying. Locates the lever in the Secretariat and in giving member states neutral information for the structural decisions that are theirs. Would complete the reform already under way and expects delivery on the ground within a term. The only candidate to bring the Multidimensional Vulnerability Index and beyond-GDP work into the debate, as a route to concessional financing. Raises under- and unrepresented countries in staffing, and says plainly that a woman as Secretary-General can deliver.