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UN Security Council Holds Third Straw Poll for Next Secretary-General as Grynspan Retakes the Lead
Reporter 欧亚时报编辑部
On September 18 local time, the 15 members of the UN Security Council held a third informal straw poll on candidates to succeed Secretary-General António Guterres, advancing the process for choosing his successor ahead of Guterres's departure at the end of this year. The poll was chaired by France, which holds the Council presidency for September, and the process lasted more than an hour. France's Permanent Representative to the UN, Jérôme Bonnafont, confirmed to reporters afterward that "the third round of straw polls has taken place," but, as is customary, did not disclose the specific vote count. The poll came on the eve of the opening of the UN General Assembly's high-level week, as world leaders converged on New York, once again putting the Secretary-General selection process in the diplomatic spotlight.
A straw poll is an informal, non-binding procedure the Security Council uses to gauge support for candidates ahead of the eventual formal nomination vote, and it differs from that final, binding decision. The vote is held behind closed doors, with only Council member representatives present; ballots are unsigned, and results are, in principle, not officially recorded or made public — though specific vote counts are typically "leaked" to the press by diplomats afterward. For each candidate, Council members mark one of three indications on their ballot: "encourage," "discourage" or "no opinion." Under the practice the Council has established in recent selection cycles, a candidate must receive at least nine "encourage" votes, with none of the five permanent members voting "discourage," to secure the Council's formal recommendation for appointment by the General Assembly.
This round's tellers were the representatives of Bahrain and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The number of candidates has remained unchanged at eight since the second round in August: Ecuadorian diplomat Ivonne Baki; former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet; former Ecuadorian foreign minister and former UN General Assembly president María Fernanda Espinosa; Argentina's Rafael Grossi, the current Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency; Costa Rica's Rebeca Grynspan, the current Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development; Uganda's Olara Otunnu, a former UN Under-Secretary-General; Guyana's Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett, its current Permanent Representative to the UN; and former Senegalese president Macky Sall.
Although the Council did not formally release the third round's results, several outlets, citing diplomatic sources, reported that Grynspan reclaimed the lead in this round with nine "encourage" votes and five "discourage" votes. Because Council members can mark "encourage" for more than one candidate on the same ballot, the sum of "encourage" votes across all candidates in a straw poll typically exceeds the Council's 15 total votes — one feature that distinguishes this informal mechanism from a conventional single-choice election. According to media reports, this round again failed to produce a clear consensus candidate, and diplomats from several countries were said to still be discussing privately whether other potential contenders might enter the race at a decisive moment.
Looking back at the two earlier rounds: Grynspan led the field in the first straw poll on July 30, when only seven candidates were in the race, with Guyana's Rodrigues Birkett close behind. By the second round on August 21, Rodrigues Birkett had overtaken Grynspan, leading with eight "encourage" votes, three "discourage" votes and four "no opinion" marks, while Grynspan slipped to second with seven "encourage" votes. Ivonne Baki joined the race between the first and second rounds, bringing the field from seven to eight candidates, where it has remained. Across the three rounds, the frontrunner has changed hands more than once, reflecting that the Council has yet to settle on a stable consensus.
Under the UN's current selection mechanism, the Secretary-General must first be recommended by the Security Council to the General Assembly by consensus, before being formally appointed by the Assembly through a simple-majority vote, typically for a five-year term. Since 2016, the General Assembly and Security Council have agreed to greater transparency in the selection process, including requiring candidates to submit a "vision statement" and to take part in informal question-and-answer sessions with the Assembly. The straw-poll practice itself emerged from this reform and has been used since the 2016 process that selected Guterres, serving as an internal reference point for Council members to gauge one another's positions — though it is not a formal procedure spelled out in the UN Charter.
Guterres's term as Secretary-General expires at the end of this year, and the UN and its member states broadly expect his successor to take office smoothly on January 1, 2027. Because the UN has never had a woman as Secretary-General, this field of candidates — which includes Grynspan, Bachelet, Espinosa, Baki and Rodrigues Birkett among others — has kept alive calls, from both member states and civil-society groups, to "break the glass ceiling." At the same time, some member states, citing the norm of regional rotation, argue the next Secretary-General should come from Latin America and the Caribbean, one reason the regional backgrounds of candidates such as Grynspan and Sall have drawn close attention.
Analysts note that while straw-poll results are non-binding, historical experience shows candidates who draw a significant number of "discourage" votes — particularly from a permanent member — rarely recover in subsequent rounds. So even though Grynspan currently leads, she also picked up five "discourage" votes in this round, more than in earlier rounds, leaving her ability to hold onto the advantage uncertain. Several organizations and outlets tracking the selection process expect the Council to hold a further straw poll after the General Assembly's high-level week concludes, with most observers anticipating that a final candidate will not become clear until later this year.
The third round is also being read as a window onto great-power dynamics. As permanent Council members, China, the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom and France each hold what amounts to a de facto veto over any candidate — a single "discourage" vote from any of them can effectively end a candidacy. Diplomatic observers note that with the round's results still not officially disclosed and the frontrunner repeatedly changing, the five permanent members have yet to coalesce around a single candidate. The selection of the UN's next Secretary-General, a key juncture in the multilateral governance system, will continue to draw close international attention in the weeks ahead.
Beyond the five permanent members, the Council's ten current elected members — Bahrain, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Denmark, Greece, Latvia, Liberia, Pakistan, Panama and Somalia — are likewise entitled to register a view on every candidate in each straw poll. Civil-society groups that have long campaigned for a more open selection process, such as 1 for 8 Billion, have repeatedly called on the Council to run an open, merit-based selection and publish each round's actual vote count, but so far the Council has stuck to its traditional closed-door approach of withholding the numbers. With the high-level week approaching, most observers expect behind-the-scenes bargaining over the candidates to intensify in the coming weeks, and whether the Council ultimately breaks with precedent to make the process more transparent will be another point worth watching as the selection unfolds.
