All seven candidates to lead the United Nations received a vote of “discourage,” effectively a veto, from a permanent UN Security Council member in the latest informal poll, a diplomat said on Friday.
Friday’s vote was the first time in the anonymous informal polling that Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States used coloured straws to indicate their vetoes, while the Security Council’s 10 elected members continued to use plain markers.
Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan – who has been among the frontrunners in the five previous polls – received the most “encourage” votes this time, but also got five “discourage” votes, including two from permanent members.
US media reports suggest Washington opposes all of the seven contenders in the race.
Washington’s envoy to the UN Mike Waltz refused to comment on the report, but said on Friday: “We have always said we just simply need the best.”
On the question of new contenders joining the race, Waltz said “countries, if they want to put more candidates in, that’s certainly within their sovereign rights.”
Among those considered by diplomats to be potential entrants are Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for Gaza under the US-backed “Board of Peace,” and the UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs Lana Nusseibeh. Türkiye’s Feridun Hadi Sinirlioglu, Secretary-General of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has also had his name floated.
Grynspan performed best on average in the first five rounds of informal polling, again coming top on Friday – despite the two vetoes.
The other candidates are Guyanese ex-foreign minister Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, the current head of the UN nuclear watchdog, Senegal’s former President Macky Sall, Ecuador’s Ivonne A-Baki, and Maria Fernanda Espinosa, and Uganda’s Olara Otunnu.
The outgoing secretary-general, Antonio Guterres of Portugal, ends his second five-year term on December 31, 2026.
Even if a candidate earns the required nine votes from the 15 available in the Security Council, they must also avoid a veto by the five major powers, which are deeply divided.
Once a candidate clears those bars, their name will go to the General Assembly of all UN members for confirmation.
The Security Council straw poll was devised in the early 1980s in an attempt to break a deadlock between two candidates shut down by vetoes. The informal mechanism has persisted, in various forms, despite criticism from countries opposed to the opaque process.
Each of the 15 Security Council members must anonymously assign each candidate one of three labels: “encourage,” “discourage,” or “no opinion.”
It is tradition that the UN’s top job should rotate between different regions. Under that premise, the role should go to a candidate from Latin America this time.