The current secretary general of the United Nations General Assembly, António Guterres, 72, was elected for a new five-year term in a ceremony held this Friday (18).
Re-election was already certain. In addition to the fact that the former Portuguese Prime Minister was the only candidate – ten other people sought to run but did not receive support from any of the 193 UN member countries – he also received the support from the 15 members of the Security Council. They recommended you to stay.
Guterres’ new term, in office since 2017, begins on January 1, 2022.
“Our greatest challenge, and also our greatest opportunity, is to use this crisis to change course towards a world that learns lessons, promotes a just, green and sustainable recovery, and shows the way for effective international cooperation.” , said the secretary general at the press conference. ceremony.
In a statement, Turkish Ambassador Volkan Bozkir, President of the 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, congratulated Guterres on the new term and underlined three points of the missions to be accomplished in the years to come: recovery post-pandemic countries, the search for gender parity and climate emergence.
“Among many other global challenges, one of the biggest challenges our generation faces is certainly the climate. If we don’t act now, the world we know will cease to exist, ”he says in an excerpt.
Part of Guterres’ first term, which he took a few weeks after Donald Trump took over the U.S. presidency, has been marred by attempts to appease the Republican’s foreign policy banners. Reluctant to multilateralism – the UN’s main hallmark – Trump has repeatedly attacked international bodies.
US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the United Nations faces historic challenges, but the re-election of the Secretary General raises the possibility that “the next five years will bring more peace, security and prosperity than the previous period “.