The next straw poll could reveal whether the contest is headed for a historic breakthrough or a...
Eighty years, eight secretaries-general at the United Nations (UN), and not one of them a woman. That streak could break within weeks, and if the numbers hold, it could break faster than anyone managing the process expected.
António Guterres, the current and outgoing UN Secretary-General, went through six Security Council straw polls over 10 weeks in 2016 before he was recommended to the General Assembly. Guyana's Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett is now the narrow frontrunner to succeed him, and if her current numbers hold, she could get there in as few as four rounds.
No secretary-general has ever been chosen faster than four rounds, and none has ever been confirmed after only two, which is exactly where this race stands today.
Eight candidates remain in contention. Two straw polls have been conducted, and a third has not yet been scheduled. Two frontrunners have emerged, both women. The field also includes two Africans running partly on the continent's long-stalled case for a Permanent Security Council seat, and one candidate whose steady numbers suggest he could end up as the compromise nobody saw coming.
In the second straw poll, Rodrigues-Birkett leads with eight "encourage" votes against three "discourage." That's down slightly from the nine votes she got on her July debut, but it was still enough to overtake Costa Rica's Rebeca Grynspan, whose support fell from ten votes to seven over the same period.
She laid out her pitch over a nearly three-hour UN dialogue in June, built around what she calls "principled pragmatism." Asked at a Bloomberg-moderated town hall how she would act if the Security Council itself became deadlocked, she did not hedge: "The Secretary-General must try, and I would be that Secretary-General that would try."
A former Guyanese foreign minister who served as her country's Security Council representative until last year, Rodrigues-Birkett has leaned into the historic weight of her bid, closing her June opening statement with a vision of the ideal UN chief cast explicitly as "she." Diplomats in the room responded warmly; Australia's delegate opened one dialogue by noting there was "nobody... who didn't let out a little cheer" at her nomination.
Grynspan was July's runaway favourite, and her credentials remain formidable. She coordinated the UN's Global Crisis Response Group on Food, Energy and Finance in 2022–23. That work underpinned the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allowed Ukrainian grain exports to resume in the middle of the war. When the town hall asked her how she would break a Council deadlock, she pointed straight to that record: "The blockade of the Security Council is when the job of the Secretary-General starts."
Still, her slide, three lost votes between July and August, is the second poll's real story. Whether that slide continues in round three may decide whether this becomes a two-woman contest or a genuine three-way race.
Senegal's former president, Macky Sall, sits mid-field with six encourage votes, unchanged between both polls. His candidacy carries real weight. He chairs the African Union, helped shape Senegal's Ecowas diplomacy, and has met Vladimir Putin directly to press Africa's case on Black Sea grain access.
But Senegal only formally endorsed his bid in July, after Burundi had already nominated him, and he's still dealing with unproven accusations that he violently repressed protests at home between 2021 and 2024, leaving dozens dead. When the town hall pressed him on how he'd stay independent while carrying that baggage, Sall didn't push back directly. He leaned on relationship-building instead: "Dialogue for me is something that needs to be held with everybody."
Uganda's Olara Otunnu has made the more dramatic move on paper, climbing from two ‘encourage’ votes in July, when he finished last in the field, to five in August, a jump that puts him within striking distance of the pack's middle tier. Addressing Council members directly on the need for institutional overhaul, he was blunt: "Reform is no longer an optional choice. It is an imperative."
Both candidacies have revived debate over Africa's long-standing demand for a permanent Security Council seat, though that reform question runs on an entirely separate track from this selection: it would require a Charter amendment and unanimous ratification by the five permanent members, and nothing close to that is currently underway.
Grossi's numbers have been the steadiest of anyone's: seven encourage votes in both rounds, even as his discourage count nearly tripled, from two to six, a sign that some Council member is quietly hardening against him. As the sitting IAEA chief who negotiated six ceasefires around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant during the Ukraine war, he has resisted campaigning full-time, calling that "a dereliction of duty." When the town hall asked him what a functioning UN would look like, he gave the most understated line of the day: "A UN that works, although it sounds incredible, is possible."
Grossi is Latin American, like Grynspan and Rodrigues-Birkett, and some diplomats see him as the field's natural fallback if the two women's contest ends in stalemate. There's also the informal regional-rotation convention to consider — under it, the seat is widely expected to go to Latin America or the Caribbean this cycle, regardless of gender.
A third straw poll has not been scheduled yet. When it comes, Council members are expected to begin using colour-coded ballots that reveal, for the first time, whether opposition to any candidate comes from one of the five veto-wielding powers, the single variable that will actually decide this race.
The UN Charter, under Article 97, makes the secretary-general the organisation's chief administrative officer, appointed by the General Assembly on the Security Council's recommendation. Nine people have held the post since the UN was founded. All nine have been men.
Trygve Lie of Norway was the first, elected on February 1, 1946 and formally installed at the General Assembly's 22nd meeting the following day. Lie had chaired the commission that drafted the Security Council provisions of the UN Charter at the 1945 San Francisco conference, and before that had been Norway's foreign minister, credited with saving the Norwegian fleet for the Allies after Germany's 1940 invasion. In November 1950, his term was extended by three years, but he resigned in November 1952 anyway.
Sweden's Dag Hammarskjöld succeeded him in April 1953 and was unanimously re-elected for a second term in 1957. He was an economist by training, with a doctorate from the University of Stockholm. Hammarskjöld died on 18 September 1961, when his plane crashed during a peace mission to the Congo, his fourth trip there that year, after President Joseph Kasa-Vubu and Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba had asked for UN military assistance.
Burma's U Thant stepped in as acting secretary-general within weeks of Hammarskjöld's death. He was formally appointed in November 1962, re-appointed for a second term in December 1966, and served until the end of 1971. Before the UN, he'd been Burma's press director, then broadcasting director, then a senior civil servant in the prime minister's office.
Austria's **Kurt Waldheim **held the post for two five-year terms starting January 1972. His tenure took him to some of the era's flashpoints, South Africa and Namibia, Cyprus, and the Middle East during the 1973 war.
Peru's Javier Pérez de Cuéllar led the UN through most of the 1980s, from January 1982 through two terms until the end of 1991. Before that, he had served as Peru's Permanent Representative to the UN, and as the Secretary-General's own special representative in Cyprus.
Egypt's **Boutros Boutros-Ghali **took office in January 1992. He had taught international law and international relations at Cairo University, and had also taken part in negotiating the 1978 Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel.
Ghana's Kofi Annan, the first secretary-general to rise through the UN's own ranks, served from 1997 to 2006. He had joined the organisation in 1962 as a budget officer with the World Health Organisation, and by the time he became secretary-general, he had already served as Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping.
South Korea's Ban Ki-moon followed, from 2007 to 2016, arriving with 37 years of government and diplomatic service behind him, including stints as his country's chief national security adviser and foreign minister.
António Guterres of Portugal became the ninth secretary-general on January 1, 2017 and remains in the post today.
