1

Annalena Baerbock, whose term as President of the 80th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly is ending, summarized the course of the procedure for selecting a successor to António Guterres in a September 4, 2026 letter addressed to all member states, and handed the process over to her successor for the 81st session.

2

Baerbock criticized the Security Council’s refusal to publish the results of the two secret straw polls held so far, even though those results had leaked to the press anyway, describing it as a disservice to the candidates, to the General Assembly, and to the credibility of the Council itself.

3

She endorsed the demand that the Council recommend more than one candidate to the Assembly — contrary to the practice unchanged since 1946 — and suggested that the Assembly should be prepared to refuse to approve the person recommended.

4

She presented the selection itself as a “credibility test” for the Organization contingent on the candidate’s sex; of the eight remaining candidates, five are women, and three of them have a documented record of promoting “reproductive and sexual rights” at the UN.

A letter closing out the General Assembly President’s term

On September 4, 2026, Annalena Baerbock, whose one-year term as President of the 80th session of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly is drawing to a close, sent all Permanent Representatives and Permanent Observers to the UN an extensive letter summarizing the course of the procedure for selecting the tenth UN Secretary-General so far. In it, Baerbock hands the process over to her successor as President of the 81st session of the General Assembly, noting that the final resolution — the Security Council’s recommendation and formal approval by the General Assembly — will take place during her successor’s term.

According to the letter, three rounds of interactive dialogues with candidates took place during the 80th session (April 21–22, June 15 and 18, and August 19–20, 2026), along with two rounds of secret straw polls in the Security Council. The third round of dialogues covered the two most recently nominated candidates: Uganda’s Olara Otunnu (heard on August 19) and Ecuador’s Ivonne Baki (heard on August 20), both nominated after the July public hearing (“UN Town Hall”), which was broadcast with the participation of the six earlier candidates.

The dispute over transparency of the Security Council’s straw polls

In her letter, Baerbock explicitly criticized the way the Security Council conducted the secret straw polls. She pointed out that the Council had failed to agree on rules for publishing the voting results during the negotiations over its procedural rules, confining itself to informing the General Assembly merely of the fact that a straw poll had taken place, without disclosing the results, even though “those results had already been leaked to the press and were circulating publicly.” In the outgoing President’s assessment, such a practice “does a disservice to the candidates, the General Assembly and, frankly, the credibility of the Security Council’s own procedure.”

Baerbock recalled that back in 2016, during the selection of António Guterres, the transparency standard of the time was meant to be “the bar, not the ceiling” for subsequent procedures. She also noted that the Security Council had failed to agree with her on a firm deadline for submitting nominations, despite her earlier appeals in May 2026, which in practice made it possible to submit further nominations shortly before successive rounds of the straw poll and hampered a full hearings process before the votes.

The proposal to recommend more than one candidate

One of the most significant threads in the letter is its reference to the voices raised by some member states during the Security Council’s open debate on working methods on August 19, 2026, calling for the Security Council to recommend more than one candidate for Secretary-General to the General Assembly, instead of (in line with the practice unchanged since 1946) presenting a single person for approval. Baerbock endorsed this proposal explicitly, noting that it would give the General Assembly “the opportunity to select between two or more candidates instead of being confined to only one candidate,” and would thereby strengthen the General Assembly’s actual role in a process that the Charter of the United Nations does not confine to a purely rubber-stamping function.

The outgoing President went even further in the letter, suggesting that the General Assembly “should have the confidence to fully exercise the role and power assigned to it in the United Nations Charter” and be willing to refuse to approve a candidate recommended by the Security Council if member states have doubts about that candidate’s genuine commitment to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter.

The selection as a “credibility test for the organization” — the criterion of sex

In the letter, Baerbock recalled that in resolution 79/327 member states unanimously expressed their “regret that no woman has ever held the position of Secretary-General” and encouraged the nomination of women candidates. She noted that at the end of the 80th session five women and three men remain nominated, and then assessed bluntly: “The final choice in this regard will therefore be a test case for the credibility of the Organization, if it practices what it preaches. After eighty years, this decision will send a powerful message about whether the United Nations truly represents the world it serves – half of whom are women and girls.”

Three of the five women candidates — Michelle Bachelet, María Fernanda Espinosa, and Rebeca Grynspan — have a documented record of promoting, at the UN, concepts such as “reproductive and sexual rights,” which they understand as encompassing a so-called right to abortion. Baerbock’s statement shows that the question of a candidate’s sex is today presented by the UN’s most senior officials as a standalone criterion legitimizing the selection, regardless of the individual candidates’ policy positions on matters that are the subject of dispute among member states.

What comes next

According to Baerbock’s letter, the further course of the process — including any further rounds of the straw poll, the Security Council’s final recommendation, and the vote in the General Assembly — will fall to the new President of the 81st session. According to press reports, as of early September 2026 the third round of the straw poll had not yet been held in the Security Council, and further rounds of voting are expected later this month. Baerbock recommended that her successor continue working to increase the transparency of the Security Council’s procedure and consider introducing, in the future, a firm deadline for submitting nominations.

“President Baerbock’s letter is significant not only because of its criticism of the lack of transparency in the Security Council’s actions — criticism that is, moreover, entirely justified, since withholding results that are publicly known anyway serves no purpose beyond feigning confidentiality. More telling is the way in which the most senior official of the General Assembly frames the criteria for selecting the Secretary-General: not as a question of administrative competence or fidelity to the Charter of the United Nations, but as a ‘credibility test’ contingent on the candidate’s sex. This is precisely the way of thinking we warned against when we described the gradual shift of the Secretary-General’s role away from that of an administrator of the organization toward that of a programmatic figure, chosen according to identity-based and ideological criteria rather than solely on the merits. We will continue to monitor the further course of this process closely,” emphasizes Julia Książek of the Ordo Iuris Center for International Law.

See also:

Source of cover photo: iStock