UN re-elects Guterres as Secretary-General

UN re-elects Guterres
UN re-elects Guterres as Secretary-GeneralSecretary-General of the United Nations by the UN General Assembly for a second term of office starting 1 January 2022 and ending 31 December 2026. Mr. Guterres (right) takes the oath of office for his second five-year term. The oath is administered by Volkan Bozkir, President of the seventy-fifth session of the United Nations General Assembly. Seated at dais in the back is Movses Abelian, Under-Secretary-General for General Assembly and Conference Management (DGACM).

UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. General Assembly unanimously elected Antonio Guterres to a second term as secretary-general on Friday, giving him another five years at the helm of the 193-member organization at a time a deeply divided world faces numerous conflicts, the growing impact of climate change, and a pandemic still circling the globe. Ambassadors in the assembly chamber burst into applause as Assembly President Volkan Bozkir announced Guterres’ re-election by “acclamation,” without a vote. Just before the announcement, Estonia’s U.N. Ambassador Sven Jurgenson, the current Security Council president, read a resolution adopted by the 15-member council recommending Guterres for a second term. Under the U.N. Charter, the General Assembly appoints the secretary-general on the recommendation of the Security Council. Guterres was the only candidate nominated by a U.N. member state, his home country Portugal where he previously served as prime minister, and the country’s current president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, was in the assembly chamber to watch the event. Immediately after his re-election, Guterres took the oath of office and delivered an address urging U.N. member nations “to do everything we can to overcome current geostrategic divides and dysfunctional power relations.”

“There are too many asymmetrics and paradoxes,” he said. “They need to be addressed head on.”

Guterres expressed hope that “what we are living through today in terms of mistrust is, I hope, an aberration but it cannot become the norm.”