UNGA President Baerbock Talks "Critical Moment" For Organization's Future

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**Romaine Bostick** (0:07)
I am here with Annalena Baerbock, who is the president of the 80th session of the UN General Assembly. As we speak right now, this week, we are expected to start to get those straw polls to potentially select the next secretary general of the United Nations. Do we have any sense about the six candidates and what you as president would like to see in terms of what their priorities should be over the next five years?

**Annalena Baerbock** (0:34)
The next secretary general will not only be the face of this unique multilateral institution, but it will also decide on whether the UN will play a relevant role on peace and security, but also on embracing the chances we have in an interconnected world about global governance structure on AI, for example, on lifting millions out of poverty. And as you said, currently, there are six candidates, four women, two men. So far, there has never been a female secretary general in 80-year history of the United Nations, so it's really a decisive moment, and an important decision also by member states to decide which person represents 8 billion people best in these challenging global times.

**Romaine Bostick** (1:21)
Well, let's talk about those 8 billion people prior to the 2015-2016 campaign. This was a relatively opaque process, the selection process that opened up a little bit about 10 years ago. And under your leadership as president of the 80th Assembly, you have tried to make things a bit more transparent, Having the candidates come out and give these interviews well in advance of the actual selection process. Are those people, the eight billion people out there, do they actually have a say in this to some degree or another?

**Annalena Baerbock** (1:51)
They are represented by their member states, by the government, by the ambassadors here in New York. However, we also know that in the modern times, power lies also in communication around the world.
So, if there's now the saying out there, for example, that two years ago, member states agreed by consensus that it should be this time really female candidates, because otherwise, those eight billion people, or at least four billion, half of them, women and girls, would question if an institution built on human rights, on equality, was not capable of finding a woman again, this will have a total different debate than it had ten years ago when we didn't really have the power of social media. So now, as we're having this town hall meeting on Thursday coming up, live streamed by Bloomberg, we will have the chance also that people hear about what's going on, because frankly speaking, most of the people probably don't know that the Secretary General process is ongoing, but this will be also a power game, frankly speaking, between the Security Council, upon which recommendation a person will be nominated, but in the end, it is the 193 member states in the General Assembly representing 8 billion who take the final decision.

**Romaine Bostick** (3:11)
But those five permanent members of the Security Council, which includes the US obviously, as well as Russia, China, France and the UK, they do have an inordinate amount of power to be able to say, this is the person that we want. If they put someone on your desk, who maybe you do not think is appropriate, what options would you have to push back on that?

**Annalena Baerbock** (3:34)
In these challenging times, in my personal view, it's always how you define power. Obviously, being a member of the Security Council, a P5 member, you would say, well, it's up on us to recommend somebody. Yet, if you define power, that in the end, the General Assembly has to agree, and if the General Assembly, so the member states, make very clear, it is hard for us, for example, to vote on a person who is denying climate change. If we just had, a couple of weeks ago, a joint resolution in the General Assembly about the member states' responsibility of fighting climate crisis, because it's one of the key drivers for more conflicts and crises around the world, so it's a peace and security issue, then power shifts. Because if there would be a proposal, for example, where a person would face a situation that he or she is not sure whether she will make the majority in the General Assembly, then obviously everything changes. And this is unique about this process, because as you mentioned, before it was behind closed doors, there was no television reporting about it, there was no social media asking questions, so where does a person stand on peace and security, or women rights, for example? But we have had also in the history a situation that, for example, when Kofi Annan was finally elected, the African states made very clear, because it was their turn, if this is not an African person being proposed, we don't even take a vote on, back then it was him.