Secret votes and vetoes: UN chief race nears climax with Grynspan in front

The process to pick the next secretary-general of the United Nations is barrelling towards a tense climax. Incumbent Antonio Guterres must step down by December 31, and the Security Council is holding a series of informal straw polls to select his successor, but no consensus has yet emerged around any candidate.

Eight candidates are in the fray. They include Costa Rica's Rebeca Grynspan, head of the UN Conference on Trade and Development, Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and Lana Nusseibeh, the United Arab Emirates minister of state for foreign affairs.

Under the rules, the Security Council recommends a candidate who receives nine votes without a veto from any of its five permanent members. The General Assembly then gives its seal of approval to that recommendation. In effect, the 15-member Security Council chooses the UN chief.

The council's five permanent members — China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — all hold veto power. The ten current elected non-permanent members are Bahrain, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Liberia, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia.

According to Article 97 of the UN Charter, the Security Council decides on a candidate and recommends them to the General Assembly for a vote by all members. The assembly has never voted down a candidate picked by the council. However, in 1950, the assembly once voted to extend the term of the then secretary-general without the council's recommendation after a deadlock in the council.

The voting process is secret. In straw polls, members indicate whether they encourage, discourage or have no opinion about a candidate. Although the polls are meant to be secret, the number of encourage, discourage and no-opinion votes is often leaked. In later rounds, coloured ballot papers are used to distinguish between the permanent members and the ten elected members.

Eight polls have been held so far, but no consensus has emerged on a candidate who has received no discouraging votes. According to the 1 for 8 Billion campaign, the latest poll saw Grynspan leading with 12 encourage votes and three discourage votes. Grossi was second with nine encourage votes, four discourage votes and two no-opinion votes, followed by Birkett with eight encourage votes, five discourage votes and two no-opinion votes.

Grynspan, if successful, could become the first woman and first Jewish person to lead the UN. She played a key role in brokering the Black Sea Grain Initiative between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, a deal that allowed millions of tonnes of food to be exported from war-torn Ukraine, much of it to developing nations.

Grossi has headed the UN nuclear agency since 2019 and has been at the centre of the UN's efforts to prevent nuclear escalation between Russia and Ukraine amid their ongoing war. But he has also faced criticism, especially from Iran, over perceptions that some of his reports critiquing Tehran's nuclear programme helped serve as a pretext for attacks on Iran by the US and Israel.

Jane Kinninmont, CEO of United Nations Association UK, said the selection process has traditionally been closed and secretive but has become more open as a result of campaigning by civil society groups and member states. However, she said, the Security Council continues to guard its secrecy tightly.

Al Jazeera's UN correspondent Gabriel Elizondo said that while there has been talk in recent years of making the process more transparent, the five permanent members want to keep it the way it is. In his words, while the United Nations is made up of 193 member states, it is really the five permanent members — the US, Russia, China, France and the UK — that hold the overwhelming power to select the next secretary-general.

There is nothing in the UN Charter about what happens if no candidate is picked before Guterres's term ends. The council's options include recommending a candidate for a shorter term or compromising on a candidate, as it did in 1996 to select Kofi Annan after a deadlock. Member states could also let a senior UN official oversee operations in the meantime. Asked whether he would stay on if no secretary-general was selected, Guterres gave a noncommittal answer, saying that as of January 1, he hopes and expects to be back home in Portugal.