Ban Ki-moon calls for single seven-year term for next UN chief

Secretary General Antonio Guterres's second and last term ends at close of next year

Former UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon urged member states to give the next UN leader stronger political backing to match the office’s moral authority, saying credibility is insufficient without the power to act. EPAShow less

Former UN chief Ban Ki-moon said on Monday the next secretary general should serve a single, non-renewable seven-year term, arguing that the current convention of two five-year stints leaves the officeholder too reliant on the council’s five permanent members for reappointment.

“Two five-year terms leave the secretary general overly dependent on this council’s permanent members for an extension,” Mr Ban told the Security Council. A single term would free the UN leader from the subtle tyranny of reappointment, he added.

Slovenia, which holds the council presidency this month, convened an open debate on the role and qualities of the UN’s next leader, who will take office when Secretary General Antonio Guterres’s second term ends at the close of 2026.

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Mr Ban urged member states to give the next UN leader stronger political backing to match the office’s moral authority, saying credibility is insufficient without the power to act.

While secretaries general are often described as “secular popes”, he said, moral standing means little without support to mediate in conflicts and respond to serious violations of international law.

Mr Ban reserved his sharpest criticism for the Security Council itself, calling it the UN’s most visible point of failure. He singled out the veto power of permanent members, accusing some of routinely blocking accountability for themselves, their allies or proxies.

“Today, the council is deadlocked on almost all the issues,” Mr Ban said. Prominent members undermine the UN’s peace and security mandate by using the veto to shield themselves and others from scrutiny, he added.

Without concrete limits on what he described as the arbitrary use or misuse of veto power, he warned, the world body would continue to struggle to fulfil its core mission – even as any reform must ultimately be approved by the council itself.

Russia’s deputy ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, meanwhile, framed the UN’s crisis as a moral failure rooted in western dominance.

Since the end of the Cold War, he said, the promise of an equal international order had been betrayed by a self-appointed global “gendarme”, producing instability rather than justice.

“The West has divided the world up into us and them” he said, producing not stability but tragedy, millions deprived of justice, dignity and hope.

The erosion of the UN’s authority, he said, stems from the selective application of international law by powerful states.

The US countered that the problem lies in bureaucratic drift rather than geopolitical imbalance.

US special political affairs representative Jennifer Loretta said the next secretary general must “bring the UN back to the purposes and principles of the charter”, insisting the organisation should serve member states, not an unaccountable bureaucracy.

As the UN’s largest financial contributor, the US made clear it expects measurable returns on its funding and will resist efforts it sees as stretching the charter’s mandate.