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The Birth of an Idea

Creation of the Campaign to Elect a Woman UN Secretary-General

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On a very raining evening in Lund, Sweden, on the last day of the 2013 ACUNS Annual Meeting, Melissa Labonte and I had gone to dinner at a small restaurant near the train station.  Over Swedish hamburgers and fries and a cold mug of beer, we began discussing some ideas and plans that ACUNS might consider in the coming years. Toward the end of our dinner, the idea emerged that it was time for a woman to become UN Secretary-General when Ban Ki-moon’s term ended in December 2016.  It was too early at that point to begin work on the plan, but we both remained engaged in the idea. 

 

Many months later, Dulcie Leimbach, founder and editor of the online news service PassBlue, had heard of Melissa’s and my interest in launching a movement to elect a woman Secretary-General and came to see me in my office at the City College of New York. A few days later, Dulcie sent a videographer to interview me on the topic for a piece she was doing and the video, which included interviews with others such as Tom Weiss, went viral on the internet. Then we were committed to moving forward and Melissa and I organized a meeting, over tea at the Yale Club, of other like-minded women to thrash out some ideas. And the Campaign to Elect a Woman UN Secretary-General was born on February 13, 2015. Unfortunately, we were not successful in our support to have the UN elect a woman Secretary-General in 2016. Undeterred, we have now, in 2024, launched the campaign once again.

 

The campaign goals are to advocate for a woman as the next UN Secretary-General and work to make the selection of a woman inevitable.  We also decided that for too long there had been the overused excuse that there were not enough qualified women to choose from.   In order to debunk that argument, we set out to identify outstanding women from around the world to clearly demonstrate the depth and high quality of women serving in very high positions.  To date, our list of now 30 outstanding women has provided the media, civil society, and member states with ample choices.  We also support transparency in the selection process, moving away from the traditional secrecy carried out behind closed doors by the members of the Security Council, particularly the permanent five members.

 

We all want a highly qualified person to become the next Secretary-General and we believe strongly that this person will be, and should be, a woman. The UN can no longer ignore half the world’s population in representing the global issues facing the UN today.  If regional representation has been considered so important in choosing a Secretary-General in the last few elections, then why should half the world’s people that live on every continent be shunned?  Of course, the Member States will ultimately decide if the next Secretary-General should come from Eastern Europe as that region has requested or whether the process will be thrown open to another region or the world.  Our campaign supports a woman to become the next leader of the Organization and there are a number of good candidates from Eastern Europe if the Member States prefer.

 

We also believe that the United Nations needs a strong Secretary-General who will energize the Organization and reinforce multilateral approaches to solving our global problems. She should bring with her to the office experience and leadership at the multilateral level and a strong commitment to the goals of the UN, using charismatic skills to reach out through the media and provide a moral compass for the UN. 

 

Melissa and I propose a call to action for anyone interested to join this effort, and to help make history by helping to persuade Member States that this is the moment.

 

As longtime members of ACUNS, Melissa and I know that ACUNS does not take a position on issues, but because we have grown with the organization over the years we strongly believe that the members will appreciate our dedication to making the UN stronger and more representative; it’s time.

 

Best regards, Jean Krasno and Melissa Labonte

www.womansg.net

The Birth of an Idea

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