Personalities can't be ignored in candidacies for UN Secretary-General

What personal qualities are needed to become a successful United Nations secretary-general? The 2016 campaign to select a new leader features many novelties in the UN’s history: an official list of candidates, public job interviews by the General Assembly and informal panel debates in London and New York. Civil society coalitions and the current president of the General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, are invested in making the selection more transparent and competitive.

But can these procedural reforms help to identify the best person for what is labeled the most impossible job in the world? After all, the secretary-general matters only as much as the person who holds that job, as he or she can rely on little explicit authority from the UN Charter. How much the position has developed is related to how previous secretaries-general have used it.

Looking at the personal qualities of three candidates, based on their different regional groups and the fact that they are women — a key point of discussion — is an important step at this stage in the process, which has entered the straw-poll step to begin eliminating candidates, which began as 12 and is now 11. (The next straw poll is Aug. 29.)