Felix Dodds comments on sustainable development, coffee & life

4th February 2020: Opening remarks to journalists on priorities for 2020 and the work of the organization UN Secretary-General António Guterres Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. As you know, 2020 marks a milestone for the United Nations – our 75th anniversary. Too often, governments and international institutions are viewed as places that talk – not as places that listen. I want the United Nations, in this anniversary, essentially to listen – so we are marking our anniversary based on conversations in every corner of the world about the future we want and the United Nations we need. There is no doubt that people have much to say. The disquiet in streets and squares across the world is proof that people want to be heard. They want world leaders to answer their anxieties with effective action. That means addressing cascading challenges and breaking what I call the vicious circles that define our day. One such vicious circle is in the realm of peace and security – ...

The background papers are out for the UN secretariat to start to undertake consultations on the Secretary General’s   Repositioning the UN development system to deliver on the 2030 Agenda – Ensuring a Better Future for All I want to do a couple of blogs on these. The first will be on the approach to the regional level in Realigning the Development Agenda. The second on the National Level. I have always been a fan of the UN Regional Economic Commissions (REC) as a mechanism to bring together countries at similar levels of development and to share experiences, build capacity, develop policy and in certain Commissions legally binding agreements relevant to their region. With certain OECD countries, there has been a tendency to underfund these activities. At times, the USA and the UK have in particular been critical of these regional commissions. This is a real opportunity to reclarify the role and responsibilities of the RECs. The instructions the Deputy Secretary General has...

With Antonio Guterres as the new UN Secretary General now agreed by the UN General Assembly it will not only be Hilary Clinton who will be working with their transition team.  A number of key positions in the secretariat are expected to change. We also don't know how many of the present Under Secretary Generals and Assistant Secretary Generals he will want to change. This includes the appointment of a new Deputy Secretary General or possibly two? There have been suggestions particularly in the report  by the ECOSOC the Independent Team of Advisors Co-Chaired by Mr. Juan Somavia (former ILO Executive Secretary) of Chile and Mr. Klaus Töpfer of Germany (former Executive Director of UNEP) that there should be two one for development (sustainable) and the other for peace and security. In the summer we also saw the change at UNEP with Erik Solheim taking over as Executive Director. He faces a very immediate challenge of expressing the vision of what should UNEP now rep...

We are down to nine candidates with Christiana Figueres withdrawal. As you can see from the votes above Antonio Guterres remains the favorite for the new Secretary General. As you will have seen from my previous blogs on the subject though I think he has an excellent cv for the job he isn’t a woman nor one from the Eastern UN region -- whose turn it is.  Although this rotation between regions has been an informal agreement it makes sense that the different regions of the world should have a turn to be UN Secretary General. It fits in with the universal nature of the organization and ensures different cultural interpretations of the job. If you have regional rotation, then the Western Europe and Other Group region have their turn next ( Antonio Guterres is from a WEOG countr y) as the Secretary General after this. The backdrop to this  fifth straw poll is there is another candidate being promoted by some of the western European countries and that is Kristalina Georgi...

So since the first poll Vesna Pusić has withdrawn as a candidate for Secretary General which leaves 11 and Kevin Rudd the former Prime Minister of Australia was NOT supported by his government to join the election. There are still rumors of a late addition by Alicia Barcena (Mexico) Executive Secretary of United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean who would be an excellent candidate but I think will not join the fray. Those who have read my blogs on the election will know I have supported both  woman and regional rotation which would mean an Eastern European woman candidate.  So let’s look at where we are. After the second straw poll António Guterres (Portugal) the former Portuguese left of center Prime Minister is still in first place but has picked up one less encourage and for the first time two discourage. The question in many people’s minds are those two P5 members such as China and Russia. There is no question in my mind ...