Costa Rican former vice president Rebeca Grynspan, who is running for the post of United Nations secretary general, criticised on Wednesday what she described as the organisation’s growing reluctance to intervene and play an active role in bringing ongoing conflicts to an end.
She said peace is under threat at a time when trust in the organisation is declining and stressed that time is running out to restore confidence, speaking during a three hour hearing before representatives of UN member states.
“If elected secretary general, I will be a peacemaker. I will act before conflicts break out, I will be the first to pick up the phone. I will be present where wars are taking place. I will speak to all sides,” Grynspan said. As a mediator, she pledged to propose ten ideas for resolving every conflict and said that even if they are rejected, she would accept the cost of failure and continue trying.
“We have become an organisation that is risk averse,” she said, repeating her criticism.
Outgoing UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, a Portuguese diplomat who will complete his second term on 31 December 2026, has faced criticism from some observers for not taking initiatives to end wars, particularly in Ukraine and the Middle East.
“The UN fails only when it does not try. We must try,” Grynspan said, recalling that as head of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development she helped negotiate in 2022 between Moscow and Kyiv, leading to the Black Sea Initiative that facilitated Ukrainian grain exports following Russia’s military invasion.
Former Senegalese president Macky Sall, the last of the four candidates to speak, argued in favour of reinventing the role of the UN secretary general so that it is present “at the table” on a global scale. The other candidates, who spoke on Tuesday, are former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet and Argentine diplomat Mariano Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Sall also underlined the close link between peace and development, warned of deepening inequalities and stressed the need to reform the international financial architecture.
Asked about the absence of references to human rights in the letter presenting his candidacy, he said he pays particular attention to the issue. He argued that promoting human rights brings prosperity to every country, although Senegal’s current authorities have been accused by non governmental organisations of violently suppressing political protests between 2021 and 2024, with dozens of deaths reported during that period.