We set up the 1 for 8 Billion campaign in 2014 to transform the secretive and super-exclusive recruitment process for the top job at the United Nations: the Secretary-General.  By mobilising civil society and working with a core group of small and medium-sized member states, progress was made: We now have public shortlists, vision statements and General Assembly hearings with candidates in which all member states and civil society can participate.

But the transparency only goes so far. The critical step assigned to Security Council states remains opaque. To be successful a candidate must be recommended to the General Assembly by the Security Council. This requires at least 9 votes from the 15 members of the UN Security Council while avoiding a veto from any of the 5 permanent members (P5) (China, France, Russia, United Kingdom and United States). 

It’s an open secret that candidates strike backroom deals with the powerful permanent members to help get their candidacy over the line. Yet until recently almost nothing has been published about how these deals work and their consequences.  We wrote Backroom Deals – a 1 for 8 Billion research report exploring the murky world of dealmaking in Secretary-General selection processes — to change this.

With co-author Fred Carver, we interviewed over 40 former senior UN staff, former diplomats, former Secretary-General candidates — including six of the 2016 candidates — as well as former candidates’ teams.  The report covers the period from the UN’s founding through to the outcome of the 2016 selection process.

The P5 is compromising the independence of candidates 

Early in the race powerful member states vet candidates with broad strokes, looking for alignment on national priorities and for someone they can work with. Candidates typically visit the capitals of all 15 members of the UN Security Council, with leading contenders visiting key capitals such as Washington DC and Moscow multiple times. 

These meetings are “high diplomacy,” one former candidate who asked to remain anonymous told us, where conditions are rarely presented explicitly, however, “when you listen carefully you can detect the red lines of the party you are talking to.” A serving diplomat with knowledge of recent selection processes added a little definition, noting that China asks every candidate for their views on Taiwan, suggesting a candidacy would not get far without adherence to the country’s ‘One-China’ principle on sovereignty.

More fundamentally, P5 countries look for an assurance that the incoming candidate will uphold their country’s privileged position, filtering out candidates that threaten to shake up the system.

As the race enters the critical phase, things get more transactional. During the straw polling period used by the Security Council to determine which candidate to recommend, our research finds that explicit deals are sometimes struck.

The report contains credible allegations suggesting that all P5 members have compromised the independence of candidates over the course of the UN’s history, impacting all recent SGs including the incumbent, António Guterres.

Backroom deals and quid pro quos on top jobs

One of the most obvious types of deals are quid pro quos on top UN jobs: in return for supporting a candidate, a P5 state or other Council member gets an assurance that one of their nationals will be appointed into a top role, should the candidate in question be successful.

The (mal)practice dates back to the the UN’s founding: as the ink on the UN Charter was drying, the P5 contravened the requirement under article 100 (2) “not…to influence [the Secretary-General] in the discharge of their responsibilities” and decided that five senior Under-Secretary-General positions should be established within the UN Secretariat and that they should appoint one each.

The pattern has held with striking continuity ever since, with specific posts ringfenced for P5 members for decades. Selection processes are not the only moment when a powerful country may attempt to extract a concession, the pressure is particularly acute during this period, with several of the most notorious national monopolies traceable back to incumbents’ candidacies. Examples cited in the report include:

• A French national taking the role of leading UN peacekeeping in return for French support of Kofi Annan’s 1996 candidacy (a job that has been held by a French national since);
• An American national being installed in the UN’s senior-most political role in thanks for US support of Ban Ki-moon’s 2006 candidacy (a US national has held this position ever since);
• A 2006 UK request to Ban Ki-moon during his candidacy that a British national be installed as head of Political Affairs, though the British settled for the position of head of humanitarian affairs instead (which a British national has held since).

The consequences for the UN are severe on a number of levels. It starves the UN of diverse talent, making it almost impossible for the nationals of small/mid-sized countries to be considered for the UN’s most consequential jobs. It undermines the UN’s identity as an independent civil service, reducing its ability to play an effective role as an honest broker when it comes to conflict mediation. This is an issue of substance as well as perception: poor quality candidates have been foisted on the UN and multiple former senior officials have openly admitted that their allegiance remained first and foremost to their national government while serving as ‘independent’ UN officials. UN credibility and effectiveness suffers.

Backroom deals impede UN reform 

Another consequence of backroom deals is the impact on UN reform. Beyond the insidious weening out of candidates with bold transformative agendas, accommodating P5 expectations on top jobs can lead to an upside-down logic on reform as institutional changes are configured to ensure that powerful countries retain what they see as their turf within the UN’s organogram.

For much of the 2016 race Guterres’s chances did not look favourable. As late as  October 3, just two days before the straw poll that identified him as the winner, Russia was signalling that it was likely to block Guterres, outlining its preference for a woman candidate from Eastern Europe — a description that fitted three of Guterres’s rivals. 

Various former UN officials and diplomats have suggested that Russia’s support was

secured without an explicit deal, but with an understanding that Russia would require a citizen to receive a significant role in Guterres’s New York HQ team. It was in this predicament that Guterres, now Secretary-General elect, invited Under-SecretaryGeneral for Political Affairs (and US Citizen) Jeffrey Feltman to lunch. Mr Feltman explained: “At the lunch, he confided that he was facing a problem: the Russians… were insisting on having a Russian national as an Under-Secretary-General in New York […] Guterres said that he was flummoxed.”

During the conversation Feltman suggested the personnel headache could be solved by creating a new department for Counter-Terrorism and appointing a Russian national to run it.  This was ultimately done, and Vladimir Voronkov became the first of two-and-counting successive Russian leaders of  the new United Nations Counter-Terrorism Office (OCT).

Interviewees also suggested Guterres’s attempt to reorganize his political and peacekeeping departments was stymied by the political necessity of maintaining two USG posts — one for France and one for the US — with roughly equivalent power. As a result, the eventual reorganization saw a much more modest reshuffling of functions into the new Department of Peace Operations (DPO) and Department of Peacebuilding and Political Affairs (DPPA).  The US and French claim on both of these roles has been cemented in over multiple SG selection processes.

As the UN faces critical financial shortfalls and a huge hit to its legitimacy as P5 members wage wars of aggression undermining the organization’s raison d’être, there is a growing chorus of states and civil society calling for reform and a renewal of multilateralism. In this context, if the incoming Secretary-General arrives in office owing favours, having promised the UN’s most consequential jobs to P5 countries, current structures will be frozen in place and meaningful reform constrained. 

The message may be getting through to candidates too: three of the seven contenders have voluntarily signed up to 1 for 8 Billion’s “Principles for Integrity”, which includes a pledge to “protect the principle of independence from member states, including with respect to appointments to senior posts”. 

Of course, the day-to-day reality is that any SG will have to navigate the expectations of powerful states. However, the selection process is a period of extreme vulnerability to undue influence and the current lack of transparency provides an enabling environment. By highlighting the conduct, and by working with the wider UN membership we can set a clear expectation that the next Secretary-General should have a free hand to pursue reforms and appoint the best possible team around them. In doing so, we can help equip the next UN leader to restore trust in the organisation and maximise the UN’s ability to take on the enormous job ahead.

Ben Donaldson has over a decade’s experience working on UN issues, including as Head of Campaigns for the United Nations Association, where in 2014 he helped to found 1 for 8 Billion, the global campaign for a fair and inclusive process to select the UN Secretary-General.