Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark will run for secretary-general of the United Nations, the fourth woman to throw her hat in the ring for the world’s top diplomatic post.
Clark, 66, has the “right mix of skills and experience for the job,” current New Zealand Premier John Key said Tuesday in Wellington, announcing his country’s nomination of Clark to replace Ban Ki-moon when he steps down at the end of 2016.
“There are major global challenges facing the world today
and the United Nations needs a proven leader who can be pragmatic and
effective,” said Key. “Coming from New Zealand, Helen Clark is well
placed to bridge divisions and get results.”
Clark, currently head of the
UN Development Programme, is the eighth candidate to be nominated
for the role, which will be decided under a new process aimed at
introducing greater transparency. The applicants will hold informal
meetings with the UN’s 193 nations, and the 15-member Security Council
will then recommend a candidate to be approved by the General Assembly.
Consensus Builder
Clark’s bid comes amid a global campaign to have a woman elected to the job. The secretary-general position has been an exclusively male bastion since the UN was created in the aftermath of World War II.The first woman to become prime minister of New Zealand in a general election, Clark served three consecutive terms from 1999 to 2008, when she was beaten by Key. A political studies professor from New Zealand’s rural Waikato region, Clark went on to become the first woman to lead the UNDP, which administers the global body’s poverty eradication program.
“I know how to build consensus on issues,” Clark said at a
press conference in New York. “The UN has many tools in its tool kit and
they all have to be utilized for a more peaceful and inclusive
society.”
Russia Factor
Clark faces a tough race. It is widely viewed as Eastern
Europe’s turn to fill the secretary-general’s chair under an unofficial
system of job rotation among geographical regions, said
John Langmore, assistant director of research at the University of
Melbourne’s School of Government and a former director of the UN’s
division for Social Policy and Development.
“Helen Clark is a stronger potential candidate than anyone
from this area ever before, but the sentiment in favor of a
secretary-general from Eastern Europe is very strong,” Langmore said in
an interview before Clark announced her candidacy. “The only way I can
think of is that Russia says it doesn’t like any of the Eastern European
candidates.”
Other Candidates
The other women that have been put forward are Bulgaria’s
Irina Bokova, the director-general of UNESCO, former Croatian foreign
minister Vesna Pusic and
Natalia Gherman, former foreign minister of Moldova. The other four
candidates are former Macedonian foreign minister Srgjan Kerim, foreign
minister of Montenegro Igor Luksic, former Slovenian President Danilo
Turk and former UN High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres, who
is Portuguese.
Both Portugal and New Zealand are included in the “Western European and Others” grouping at the UN.
When asked about the notion of it being Eastern Europe’s
turn at the UN’s helm, Clark said nominations were called from all
nations.
“I can offer the style of leadership needed today,” she said.
The Security Council -- which includes the permanent five
members of China, France, Russia, the U.K. and the U.S. -- will start
discussions over candidates in July. New Zealand is currently a
non-permanent member of the council.
A core group of UN member states support the bid for a woman to be nominated to the job, said
Jean Krasno, a professor in City College of New York’s Colin Powell
School for Civic and Global Leadership and chair of the Campaign to
Elect a Woman UN Secretary-General.
“The timing is right because women who have become empowered
over the last couple of decades are finally working their way up to
very, very prominent positions,” Krasno said. “So you can’t any longer
hold the argument that there aren’t enough qualified women.”
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