The race to select the next United Nations Secretary-General has entered a decisive phase. With informal straw polls starting at the end of this week in the Security Council, the candidates’ Town Hall just held on July 23, and interviews with the Security Council, the now seven candidates (four of them women) have articulated their visions for leading the organization through one of the most turbulent periods in its history. Under the regional rotation tradition, this election cycle is Latin America and the Caribbean Group’s turn; four of the candidates are from the region, while two are from Africa.

The relatively small number of candidates (compared to 13 in 2016) underscores the exceptional challenges of leading the UN at this moment of eroding consensus among major powers, an increase in active conflicts (the highest level since before World War II), and declining trust in the UN to address the world’s most pressing issues. However, it is at this moment of rupture that the UN has an opportunity to make the most ambitious changes, ones that need to be led by the right Secretary-General. 

The central question is who can effectively and inclusively govern the UN system, rebuild trust among Member States (the main culprit of an unwillingness to compromise, which causes ineffectiveness), and demonstrate that multilateralism can deliver results, especially for those in greatest need. In this context, the next Secretary-General should focus on delivering on promises of institutional reform, monitoring and evaluating existing programs and agreements, building coalitions, and exercising the political and diplomatic leadership needed to restore the UN’s credibility and relevance.

Challenges Facing the UN, The Case for Delivery

The next Secretary-General will inherit a UN facing a profound crisis of legitimacy, reflected in the fact that 72 Member States have failed to pay their assessed contributions this year (compared to 42 in 2025), highlighting growing doubts about the organization’s value for money. While the UN remains indispensable to fostering international cooperation and problem-solving, its credibility has been eroded by lack of action on ongoing conflicts (most notably in Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan) and a growing perception that it struggles to deliver. According to survey data from adults in 34 countries, three-quarters support international collaboration when it is proven effective at solving problems, but only 58% trust the UN to lead those efforts. While most Secretary-General candidates during the July 23 Town Hall emphasized the need for the UN to deliver on the ground, there was little talk of diagnosing why the UN has a problem with delivery, how to make the UN more delivery-oriented, and with what tools. 

María Fernanda Espinosa, former Ecuadorean Minister of Foreign Affairs and former President of the UN General Assembly, notably discussed the need to break down the silos of the three pillars of the UN (peace and security, human rights, and development) to enable proactive solutions on cross-cutting issues such as climate, creating a prevention and early action hub, and cautioning that we must not confuse activity with impact. Michelle Bachelet, former president of Chile and former head of UN Women, discussed the need to focus on solutions and use all tools (good offices, mediation, and special envoys) to prevent and anticipate conflict. Rebeca Grynspan, Secretary-General of UN Trade and Development, proposed a good offices support unit within the Secretary-General’s office, and highlighted the need to make the UN demand-driven and focus on building stronger relationships with regional organizations and local actors.

Governing the UN for Results

The next Secretary-General must champion multilateral cooperation while demonstrating the ability to turn commitments into tangible results by effectively leveraging UN agencies, the UN system’s most operational and visible presence on the ground. This also requires embedding implementation, monitoring, and evaluation into the core structure and mandate of the Secretary-General’s office, making effective delivery and continuous learning central to leadership rather than an afterthought once agreements have been reached, ultimately leading to stronger and more informed solutions. This should draw on lessons from current EOSG-led “online dashboards” for the Pact for the Future and UN80 Initiative. Such a shift requires building coalitions, forging new strategic partnerships, listening to those most affected about what delivery looks like, and maintaining the persistence to see negotiations through to implementation, recognizing that in an era of growing geopolitical division, implementation credibility is becoming just as important as the UN’s normative legitimacy.

The next Secretary-General must also restore peace and security to the center of the UN’s mission, an imperative recognized by every candidate at the town hall. The organization was founded as a peace project, yet its credibility has been undermined by its inability to prevent or resolve many of today’s conflicts, particularly when demand for the UN is high. Candidates should, therefore, prioritize how they would create the political space for negotiations and sustain diplomatic engagement through to implementation. This is the Secretary-General’s core role, yet one from which the UN has too often been absent or sidelined in recent years. This will require closing the widening gap between decision-making in New York and the realities faced by communities living through conflict by being more visible on the ground, being more proactive in preventive diplomacy, and more persistent in pursuing political solutions. The UN’s relevance will also depend on communicating the value of its often unseen diplomacy, demonstrating not only where it responds to crises, but where it successfully prevents them.

Completing the Agenda Before Creating Another One

Rather than negotiating another set of global goals, the next Secretary-General should prioritize delivering on the commitments Member States have already made, including the 2030 Agenda, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and the Pact for the Future. Demonstrating tangible progress on these commitments would do far more to restore confidence in multilateralism than creating new promises. Yet implementation on these agendas (and the development pillar) received relatively little attention during the July 23 Town Hall with Secretary-General candidates. Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Permanent Representative of Guyana to the UN, highlighted the need for a workable post-2030 agenda, accelerating SDG implementation through stronger partnerships with international financial institutions (IFIs), and expanded concessional financing. Macky Sall, former president of Senegal, similarly called for reform of the international financial architecture to mobilize public and private finance, address unsustainable debt, and expand access to affordable financing. María Fernanda Espinosa emphasized the private sector’s role in driving development through investment, technology, and job creation, as well as noting that investment in development creates global stability. 

Even though only 35% of SDG targets are making adequate progress and just 18% remain on track, there is a window to regain momentum. Outcomes from the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD4), growing support for moving Beyond GDP as a measure of progress, and the 2027 SDG Summit all provide opportunities to accelerate implementation. The next Secretary-General should seize this momentum by embedding robust monitoring, evaluation, and learning into delivery, using evidence on what has worked and evaluating why progress has stalled to shape more effective post-2030 strategies.

The Pact for the Future, for instance, should be viewed as a vital implementation tool. It provides a bridge for accelerating progress on the SDGs while reopening critical conversations that have often stalled in consensus. The UN80 initiative offers an opportunity to reinforce this agenda by aligning institutional reform with implementation, rather than allowing efficiency measures to compete with delivery. 

Any austerity measures, however, should be accompanied by rigorous evaluation to ensure they do not undermine delivery for the world’s most vulnerable populations. Our recent assessment of 40 of the Pact’s 56 Actions found that while 56% are making some progress, implementation has regressed on 20% of peace and security indicators and 17% of indicators related to transforming global governance — two areas central to restoring confidence in the UN. As an agreement adopted by consensus by Member States, the next Secretary-General should use the Pact to strengthen delivery on structural UN reform and lay the foundations for a credible post-2030 development framework.

A Secretary-General for Delivery

The next Secretary-General will assume office at a moment when the UN’s relevance will increasingly be measured by what it delivers. Success will depend on demonstrating that the organization can implement agreements and mandates it already has — mediating successful peace processes to end conflict, accelerating sustainable development, and translating political agreements into measurable results. This requires a Secretary-General who combines political judgment, diplomatic credibility, executive capacity, and moral authority — someone able to build coalitions, navigate geopolitical divides, and restore confidence in collective action. The success of the next Secretary-General will be defined by her or his ability to demonstrate that multilateralism can still deliver solutions, improve lives, and remain an indispensable global public good.