When António Guterres was chosen as the new secretary general of the United Nations, he plucked from its 1945 charter the values that he says matter most: peace, justice, human dignity, tolerance and solidarity.
But the former Portuguese prime minister succeeds Ban Ki-moon with the stark knowledge that, across the world, each of these noble and desirable qualities is in short supply.
He will take office against a bleak global backdrop: heartbreaking images from the civil war in Syria, the Israel-Palestine conflict, Yemen and South Sudan, repeated terrorist outrages in many countries and rising tension between Russia and the West.
Massive immigration has been driven by some of these crises, familiar territory for a man who served more than 10 years as the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, struggling to cope in 126 countries with the humanitarian nightmare of 65 million displaced people.
In declaring his commitment to seek solutions, Guterres says he intends to make “prevention, prevention, prevention” his priority in place of the redundant policy of trying to apply “peacekeeping” in conditions where there is little peace to keep.
Addressing the 193-member UN General Assembly when he was sworn in on Monday, he promised a hands-on approach, declaring: “As part of my good offices, I am ready to engage personally in conflict resolution where it brings added value.”
Guterres, 67, was elected to the world’s highest diplomatic role despite initial opposition from Russia, which wanted an eastern European secretary general, and those who argued it was time to break the mould and appoint a woman.
But the academic-turned-career politician emerged as clear favourite among 13 candidates in the selection process, winning each of six straw polls.
“Bittersweet,” tweeted one of the defeated female candidates, Costa Rica’s Christiana Figueres. “Bitter: not a woman. Sweet: by far the best man in the race.”
Guterres takes her wider point; he has pledged to address gender disparity, saying that he will find senior roles for women in his leadership team. What assurances he may also have privately given to win over the Russians is a matter of some speculation.
Guterres said in his acceptance statement that he recognised his duty, having been chosen by all member states, to be at the service of them all equally, “with no agenda but the one enshrined in the UN charter”.
He added: “I am fully aware of the challenges the UN faces and the limitations surrounding the secretary general. The dramatic problems of today’s complex world can only inspire a humble approach – one in which the secretary general alone neither has all the answers, nor seeks to impose his views; one in which the secretary general makes his good offices available, working as a convener, a mediator, a bridge-builder and an honest broker to help find solutions that benefit everyone involved.”
It’s a demanding job description, and perceptions of the secretary general’s performance can be unforgiving.
There has been gathering international dismay at the failure of the UN to make a meaningful impact on the tragedy of Aleppo. Ban ends his two five-year terms under lingering criticism for unconvincing and even “lethargic” responses to momentous events.
He was also accused of responding weakly to allegations of sexual abuse by UN peacekeeping troops in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Libya, Mali and Sudan. The UN seemed at one point more concerned with pursuing a whistle-blower than addressing the scandal that had been exposed.
The independent, New York-based Foreign Policy Association went so far as to headline its website report on the appointment of Ban ’s successor “Can António Guterres save the UN?”
António Manuel de Olivieira Guterres was born in Lisbon on April 30, 1949, and showed early signs of a distinguished academic future. When he completed secondary education at the respected Camões Lyceum, it was with an award as the top student in Portugal. He studied physics and electrical engineering at Lisbon’s Instituto Superior Técnico, and lectured as an assistant professor before opting, amid the turbulence of Portugal in the early 1970s, to devote his life to politics.
He joined Portugal’s Socialist Party and rose to prominent positions within the party after the Carnation Revolution swept the dictator Marcello Caetano and his fascist Estado Novo party from power in 1974.
Later, he helped negotiate his country’s entry into the European Economic Community, the predecessor of the European Union. His Catholicism and conservative instincts distanced him from the left of his party, but he became its secretary general in 1992 and was appointed prime minister in 1995.
Guterres enjoyed public approval in the early part of nearly seven years at the head of government, but felt uncomfortable with moves towards the liberalisation of abortion law and acceptance of homosexuality, policies that enjoyed broad support in his party.
On the world stage, he championed UN intervention to end bloodshed in a former Portuguese colony, East Timor, after Indonesia-backed militia reacted with extreme force to a vote for independence in 1999 – the violence followed a long period of brutal Indonesian occupation. Under Guterres’s stewardship, another Portuguese colony, Macau, was transferred to China.
But Guterres’s domestic popularity waned, along with the economy, during his second term. The socialists were humiliated in local elections and he resigned in 2001 “to prevent the country from falling into a political swamp”.
He took the presidency of Socialist International, a grouping of social democratic parties from more than 100 countries, of which he was already a vice-president, until his appointment as UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
Guterres has married twice. His first wife, Luísa Amélia Guimarães e Melo, a child psychiatrist and mother of his two children, died from cancer during his first term as prime minister in 1998. He married his present wife, Catarina Marques de Almeida Vaz Pinto, a former political colleague, three years later.
When the process of finding a new secretary general began, Guterres was considered an outsider. By the end, though, he was, in the words of Samantha Power, the United States’ UN ambassador, a “remarkably uncontentious” choice; a candidate whose “experience, vision, and versatility across a range of areas proved compelling”.
The goodwill is shared by those who have worked with Guterres. "I travelled a few times with him to the field [working with refugees] and he is great; he will make a very fine secretary general," one UN colleague told The National.
But as he prepares to begin this most challenging of roles on New Year’s Day, Guterres knows the world will be impatient for evidence that he can live up to the billing.
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