Priorities for the Next Secretary-General
UN Photo/MB, November 3, 1961
OCTOBER 2025
The next United Nations Secretary-General is slated to be seated on January 1, 2027. This white paper explores some of the key issues – and the competencies required to tackle these key issues – that should be topline priorities for the next Secretary-General at a vastly important historical moment. Four particular areas are recommended for time and attention: Peace and Security; Global Development and Health; Change Management and Finance; and positioning the UN to effectively address a new generation of global challenges including Artificial Intelligence and Climate Change.
Introduction
Given that the United Nations is already grappling with a wide range of pressing challenges – ranging from a growing budget crisis, major reforms being advanced as part of the ‘UN80’ initiative, sharp questions about its continued relevance in both the Global North and South, and conflicts in Gaza, Ukraine, and beyond – it is fair to question why anyone would be looking beyond the term of current Secretary-General António Guterres into the tenure of his successor. But it is exactly because the challenges facing the United Nations and multilateralism are so great, and the window for real change and reform is rarely open in such a fashion, that we should think very clearly about the most pressing priorities for the next Secretary-General.
Indeed, only by accurately assessing the challenges for the next Secretary-General’s term, can we begin to effectively evaluate the skills, competencies, and experience candidates for this position bring to the table and their relative appropriateness for the position.
Peace and Security
The next Secretary-General needs to prioritize and demonstrate leadership in the peace and security space, including by renewing and reinvigorating the good offices function and overseeing the UN’s changing role.
The ideal candidate would not only have hands-on experience in difficult political and security negotiations, but also embrace a vision of the United Nations as an entrepreneurial, expert, flexible, and dynamic player in making the world a more peaceful place.
By widely available metrics, we are faced with several uncomfortable facts: global conflicts continue to proliferate; the human and social costs of such conflict continue to escalate; and, the role of the United Nations in preventing, ending, and mitigating such conflicts has dimmed.
The first sentence of the first article of the UN Charter makes clear that the most fundamental (but certainly not only) purpose of the United Nations is to “maintain international peace and security.” And certainly, the founders of the United Nations would be pleased, as the organization marks its 80th birthday, that no great power conflict resembling the first or second World Wars has taken place since its founding.
That said, the trend lines around peace and security are disturbing. At the end of 2024, there were more than 123 million people forcibly displaced around the globe according to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees – a population so significant that if taken together they would make up the eleventh largest country in the world. Even more striking is how quickly these numbers have grown and hit historic highs. Since the end of 2017, there has been an 86.5 percent increase in the number of internally displaced persons; a 44.9 percent increase in refugees, and an 81.4 percent increase in the total number of people forcibly displaced (which is the combined number of internally displaced and refugees.)
The United Nations, and the Secretary-General specifically, have not played a significant diplomatic role in trying to end the high-profile conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and beyond in recent years. Multiple observers have noted that there has been a general withering of the UN’s “good offices” functions over time, i.e. the ability to help facilitate negotiations and directly mediate talks to end (or prevent) conflicts. And these envoys, for the most part, are usually directly deployed by the Secretary-General and are seen as a vital function of the UN’s leadership – there is little substitute for the willingness to send a trusted, credible diplomat into an area with tensions to actively listen to all parties, provide insight, and help facilitate steps toward peace.
Both during the Cold War and in its immediate aftermath in the mid-1990s the use of the Secretary-General’s good offices, UN special envoys, and high stakes shuttle diplomacy was a relatively common element of support for international peace and security. The post-Cold War period also saw the rise of the UN working hand-in-glove with what were diplomatic, and sometimes military, coalitions of the willing to protect civilian populations in places like Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Sierra Leone. Former UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths recently argued that the UN is “relegating itself to an increasingly marginal place in primary peacemaking,” while bemoaning that “a culture of caution has seeped into the organization, a sense of inertia and resignation in the face of political deadlock.”
There are a number of other forces at work here. The conflict in Ukraine was caused by the invasion of Russia – a P5 member – making UN involvement challenging. Similarly, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been notoriously difficult to mediate, and the United States – also a P5 member – has been quite resistant to United Nations engagement.
In addition, some of the hesitancy to engage in good offices may be particular to this specific Secretary-General. He has had some notable successes on his watch, and the UN was directly involved in negotiating the Black Sea Grain Initiative between Russia and Ukraine, helping defuse an electoral/political crisis in Bolivia, brokering a ceasefire in Libya, and facilitating the disarmament of the former FARC-EP guerrilla group in Colombia. All are good examples of the importance and power of UN engagement in peace and security, with the Black Sea Grain Initiative in particular being a great example of how patient negotiation was able to find mutually aligning self-interest that led to an agreement where at first it seemed almost impossible.
In other ways, it is hard to avoid the feeling that the United Nations has become reluctant to wade into the peace and security space. The current Secretary-General did appoint a “personal envoy” for Sudan in 2023, the former Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra. But Lamamra has had little luck in resolving that conflict even as he has complained that the diplomatic space around the Sudan issue is overcrowded and some members of civil society have complained he is too passive in his role. Similarly, while Sigrid Kaag of the Netherlands is currently serving as the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Process, it is clear that the UN has largely been sidelined from peace negotiations.
And all of this comes at a time when budgets for UN peacekeeping efforts – which are distinct from good offices but often complementary – continue to face steep budgetary pressures. The next Secretary-General will also need to oversee and help manage the downsizing and withdrawal of UN peace operations such as the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), as well as the consequences and implications of the UN’s changing role in peace and security.
Global Development and Health
Global development and health must be a central priority for the incoming Secretary-General. These fundamental efforts to reduce inequality, improve the human condition, and give millions of people greater hope and agency are absolutely essential.
With bilateral donors increasingly in retreat, the new Secretary-General will not only need to make the case from the bully pulpit that these investments are invaluable, but to help ensure that ongoing UN restructuring and reform efforts are designed and implemented in a fashion that allows the most effective development interventions and support moving forward.
The next Secretary-General will also need to land an effective successor to the Sustainable Development Goals which expire in 2030.
The period since the onset of the Covid pandemic in March 2020 has been an extraordinarily challenging period for global development and health. The pandemic posed more than enough challenges for low- and middle-income countries, but its negative impact was quickly compounded by spiraling inflation (including sharp increases in food, fuel, and fertilizer prices), a mounting debt servicing crisis across much of the Global South, diversion of much needed development assistance dollars by European states into dealing with refugees from the Ukraine crisis entering their own borders, and general retrenchment in bilateral foreign assistance programs.
These challenges have only continued to intensify. The United States has withdrawn from the World Health Organization and reconsidered its involvement even in multilateral health collaborations widely celebrated for their power and effectiveness in saving lives such as GAVI (the Vaccine Alliance) and the Global Fund. In addition, the United States has shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, the most influential and far-reaching bilateral development agency since its founding in 1961.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) projects a 9 to 17 percent drop in Official Development Assistance (ODA) in 2025 and Least Developed Countries, or LDCs, are projected to see a 13-25 percent fall in net bilateral ODA from OECD Development Assistance Committee providers. This comes on top of what was already a 9 percent drop in official development assistance in 2024, with those cuts being felt disproportionately in sub-Saharan Africa.
And we see cuts playing out across the UN system engaged in global health and development. The WHO trimmed what was an already tight 2026-27 budget from $5.3 billion to $4.2 billion, given the loss of the United States as its largest donor. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has insisted that the U.S. will not provide additional funding to Gavi unless it changes its evaluation of vaccine science and safety – despite the fact that Gavi vaccines have helped save more than 18 million lives since 2000.
In addition, the U.S. has suspended all future funding for the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), which will result in the loss of critical health services for vulnerable women and girls across the globe, many in countries in conflict.
The 2024 Sustainable Development Goals report called progress toward the SDGs “alarmingly insufficient.” The new Secretary-General will not only need to be a deft diplomat to help forge a broadly supported successor to the Sustainable Development Goals through constructive intergovernmental negotiations, they will need to possess a sophisticated understanding of development economics and the UN’s comparative advantages (and disadvantages) in helping drive forward global development and health in practical, operational terms with increasing leadership being driven from the local level.
Change Management, Budgets, and (Over) Dues
The next Secretary-General will face steep managerial challenges: a demoralized staff, a lingering budget and arrears crisis, and a reform agenda that will remain mid-stream.
It is vital that the next Secretary-General possess considerable managerial skills while simultaneously being able to make a compelling case that Member States need to support, and fund, the UN’s important work. Such efforts are ultimately mutually reinforcing.
With the United Nations hit hard by a budget crunch and major reform efforts underway late in the term of the current Secretary-General, it is clear that a great number of managerial and general financial issues will spill over onto the plate of the next Secretary-General. This suggests that the ideal candidate will need real managerial chops – and considerable familiarity with the sometimes-byzantine UN architecture and budget process – to be fully effective. Given the scope and speed of staff reductions, it will also be incumbent upon the next Secretary-General to restore a general esprit de corps among rank-and-file staffers, even as they are going through major organizational change and restructuring.
First and foremost, the new Secretary-General will need to help get the institution on better financial footing so that organizational change is not simply a reaction to mounting budget pressures going forward. Arrears have been a fairly frequent problem at the United Nations over the years, but the current level of arrears, when coupled with reductions in voluntary contributions particularly from the United States, has led to across-the-board budget cuts of 20 percent with some agencies looking at even steeper reductions.
The United States is currently $1.495 billion in arrears, China $597 million, and Russia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and Venezuela all between $38 to $72 million in arrears. Unpaid Peacekeeping Assessments, as of April 30, 2025, were in a similar range, with the U.S. $1.5 billion in arrears; China $587 million, and Russia $123 million in arrears. In fact, the United States is approaching the point where its arrears are substantial enough that it could lose its vote in the General Assembly under Article 19 of the UN Charter.
While Member States are obviously responsible to provide their dues for an organization which they established, it is also likely that the new Secretary-General will need to either lead something of a charm offensive to get countries to meet these obligations or begin to adopt more innovative approaches to budgeting and power-sharing within the institution.
It is also clear that the three workstreams of the UN80 Initiative – operational efficiency, a mandate implementation review, and potential structural changes – will have significant implications for the term of the next Secretary-General. Many of the proposals will involve long-term implementation strategies that extend beyond the end of 2026, and those that don’t will have impacts across the system that will continue for years to come. It is also entirely possible that an incoming Secretary-General decides to significantly revise these reform proposals or even abandon some of their elements. And many of the more dramatic proposals for UN reform are reliant on debate and approval by Member States rather than any diktat by the Secretary-General.
For example, workstream one on operational efficiency, which is probably the least complex of the three workstreams in UN80, is looking at issues such as establishing common administrative platforms (CAPs) that consolidate executive administrative functions; consolidating payroll functions, and conducting a review to determine if post locations could be moved to less expensive alternatives. The Secretary-General’s report on the Revised Budget Estimates, for example, details plans for “the second phase of the CAP rollout in 2027” to be launched in Geneva, Nairobi, and Beirut. It is difficult to imagine that any of the measures under Workstream One would be fully over the finish line before the end of the current Secretary-General’s term. (Previous efforts to streamline UN operations have often proved to be far more complex and time-consuming than initially presented. For example, the “Umoja” system was rolled out earlier this decade promising to be a “a single, global solution that is enabling efficient and transparent management of the United Nation’s financial, human and physical resources and improving programmatic delivery.” Its rollout and implementation has experienced numerous hiccups and delays with many UN staff sharply questioning its functionality and value.)
The issues of mandate review and possible major agency restructurings covered in workstreams two and three are even more complex and time consuming. The current Secretary-General’s proposal to sunset UN AIDS by the end of 2026 already acknowledges that “This would entail mainstreaming capacity and expertise into relevant entities of the UN development system in 2027.” Workstream two and three will certainly be there to greet the new Secretary-General as they walk through the door and head to their office on the 38th floor in January 2027.
In short, the next Secretary-General will need to have the experience and qualifications to manage a major restructuring. This includes the willingness to learn from best practices and past successful efforts at the UN – such as the approach taken with combining four parts of the UN into an elevated agenda to address gender, with UN Women in 2010 – and the skill and diplomacy required to navigate and manage politics of the bureaucracy and the member states.
The managerial role of the Secretary-General is always an important, if underappreciated, part of the position, and some Secretary-Generals have even embraced an approach of having their staff largely take the lead in “managing the building.” But given the organizational, management, fiscal, and political challenges facing the United Nations at this moment, the next Secretary-General will have to take a more direct approach, and these issues will need to be high on the list of priorities. The Secretary-General will need to be both a highly capable manager and able to marry these skills with adept diplomacy to build and maintain constituencies for funding, reform, and effectiveness. Managing Member State niche interests and priorities, and adjudicating turf battles between agencies and departments amid a budget crunch, is a vital, unglamorous, part of being an effective Secretary-General.
Future Casting: AI, Climate Change, and New Economics
By their global nature and sweeping impact on civilization across every corner of the world, both AI and climate change are challenges that are inherently multilateral in their impact and their solutions. Both are also deeply complex issues to negotiate on a multilateral basis, in part because both are deeply intertwined with economics. Both of these issues need to be front and center for the next Secretary-General.
On AI, the United Nations will need to play an important role in maximizing opportunities for AI to spur development while simultaneously helping significantly mitigate its risk.
On climate, the next Secretary-General will need to demonstrate how effective climate action is in the best economic, social, and environmental interests of families and communities buffered by multiple years of the pandemic and subsequent inflation and other economic shocks.
Effective multilateralism requires looking toward the horizon as much as it does understanding the crisis de jure. In that regard, and building on the Pact for the Future, it will be particularly important for the next Secretary-General to be expert in, and effectively address, two increasingly important issues: Artificial Intelligence and the increasingly severe impact of climate change.
Let us first consider Artificial Intelligence. The United Nations has a critical role to play in AI governance. Although agreement will not come quickly, the UN can help avert catastrophic risk associated with AI use, particularly on the military front. The United Nations also has an important role to play in helping tilt the scales so that AI is used in ways that are genuinely beneficial to social development while limiting what is widely expected to be extensive global economic fallout from increased AI uptake impacting the Global South. The United Nations also can make a significant contribution by helping establish international scientific consensus around AI and its global impact through the International Scientific Panel on AI that was established in August 2025, similar to what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was able to achieve on that topic.
While general progress on AI governance has moved slowly, early engagement from the UN system on AI came in June 2017, with the UN’s International Telecommunications Union’s AI for Good Summit in Geneva, which has now become an annual gathering attended by government officials, UN agencies, NGOs, industry leaders, and AI experts to discuss ethical, technical, and policy issues around AI.
In 2021, UNESCO finalized the first-ever global standard on AI ethics, agreed by all Member States, in the Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence. In 2023, the UN created a 39-member advisory body to address the governance of AI which includes technology company executives, academics, and representatives of select Member States. The High-Level Advisory Body released the “Governing AI for Humanity” final report which called for progress on governance issues, noting that 118 countries are not involved in any of the existing interregional AI governance initiatives.
The report flagged a number of useful issues ranging from the digital divide, capacity building measures, and steps toward confidence building. And indeed, it is important to note that for much of the Global South, the question of catastrophic risk from AI (rightly or wrongly) feels subsidiary to worries that they are just being left behind in the race to develop and utilize AI which will result in their economic, political, and strategic positions being weakened.
In 2024, the Global Digital Compact was agreed alongside the Pact for the Future. Under Objective 5, the compact commits to “Enhance international governance of artificial intelligence for the benefit of humanity, including establishing within the United Nations, the multidisciplinary Independent International Scientific Panel on AI and establishing a Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
Facilitating high-level dialogue on frontier AI, ideally involving the companies that are at the forefront of developing frontier AI, would be a welcome contribution. The Global Dialogue on AI may be the most effective vehicle for doing so.
UN implementing agencies, particularly in the development and humanitarian spheres, have enormous potential to help establish best practices and effective use of AI in partnership with host countries and civil society. The United Nations can play an important role in maximizing opportunity in development from AI while helping significantly mitigate risk. It also seems likely that the United Nations, in conjunction with key international financial institutions, will need to calculate the impact of AI into their plans for economic development and establish appropriate funds and mechanisms to help the Global South compete on what will be a very different global economic landscape moving forward.
The United Nations has played an important role in addressing climate change to date, but given the intensifying impact of climate, multilateral efforts in both mitigation and adaptation still have a very long way to go. World Inequality Lab data indicates that the poorest 50 percent of the world’s population generated only 12 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions while suffering 75 percent of the relative income losses resulting from climate change. Africa is especially vulnerable given that more than 60 percent of its population engaged in smallholder farming, growing crops that rely on rainfall rather than irrigation.
The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, held in Sweden in 1972, is widely seen as the first world conference that made the environment a major issue. This work on the environment and climate has moved in a highly uneven fashion across the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988 and the 1992 Rio Conference that produced the Rio declaration, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Declaration on the principles of forest management.
Follow-up work on climate advanced across the first Conference of Parties (COP), UNFCCC, in Berlin in 1995, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that emerged from COP3, and the landmark Paris Agreement on climate change struck in 2015.
But if the Paris Agreement marked a celebratory moment, progress since that time has stalled, implementation of the agreement has been uneven, and global commitments to combat global change have often fallen far short of the soaring rhetoric of the aforementioned conferences and agreements, even as the United States has stepped away from the Paris agreement during the first and second Trump Administrations.
Climate stands as an example where a series of Secretary-Generals have used the grand stage of the UN with considerable effectiveness given the scope of the challenge. But as some countries and their populaces back away from climate commitments, the next Secretary-General, working with allied civil society and Member States, will need to help demonstrate how effective climate action is in the best economic, social, and environmental interests of families and communities buffered by multiple years of the pandemic and subsequent inflation and other economic shocks. The Secretary-General will need to be an effective communicator-in-chief that can make the case that acting on climate has direct benefits at the local level, and help bend the economic imperative in support of a far more circular global economy. The Marine Biodiversity Treaty which was recently ratified is a welcome step in that direction, and hopefully it is followed by progress on the global plastics treaty which has stalled to date.
Conclusion
Given the state of geo-politics and continued deep ripples of global economic uncertainty, the next Secretary-General will step into their role at an unusually important moment. Their honeymoon period will likely be a short one given the list of challenges currently on the docket. That is why a focus on peace and security, global health and development, change management and finance, and positioning the UN to effectively address a new generation of global challenges including artificial intelligence and climate change feels like an appropriate list for a position that should be occupied by the world’s pre-eminent diplomat.
To meet these challenges, the ideal Secretary-General candidate will meld some important skill sets: managerial savvy; political courage; the ability to build effective coalitions for change; and an understanding of what the United Nations does well, and what it does not.
The stakes remain high, and the aspirations expressed by the founders of the United Nations 80 years ago remain as worthy as ever.