By David Brunnstrom and Olivia Le Poidevin
April 22 (Reuters) – Former Costa Rican vice president Rebeca Grynspan, a candidate to head the United Nations, vowed on Wednesday that peacemaking would be her first priority if chosen, while warning that trust is waning in the world body and time running out to restore it.
“Peacemaking is the purpose of this organization,” Grynspan, one of four candidates vying to become the next U.N. secretary-general from next year, told a hearing on her candidacy at the U.N. in New York.
“I will be a peacemaker. I will land before conflicts erupt, be the first to pick up the phone. I will travel to where the wars are. I will speak to every party. I will work with the Security Council, with the member states, and will mediate among the mediators,” she said.
The candidates are bidding for a five-year term to succeed Antonio Guterres of Portugal, which can be extended for another five, and will face an enormous task to revitalize an organization in crisis, whose stature has significantly diminished in recent years.
Major powers, even as they increasingly flout long-held norms of international order, have pressed the 193-member organization to reform, slash costs, and prove its relevance.
There are far fewer candidates than in 2016, when Guterres was chosen from a field of 13 contenders, but others can join in coming months.
Born to parents who fled Europe after World War Two, Grynspan said their lives and her experience had been a demonstration of what peace makes possible.
Grynspan, an economist who is the current head of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, also vowed to lead reform efforts.
“To defend the United Nations today is to have the courage to change it. Reform for delivery will be my second priority,” she said, adding that “trust in the organization is waning, and … time is running out to restore it.”
NO WOMAN HAS LED U.N.
Grynspan, 70, is aiming to be the first woman to head the U.N. in its 80-year history.
She is up against Chile’s former president, Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, the current head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog, and Senegal’s former leader Macky Sall.
In a hearing on Tuesday, Bachelet, 74, underlined her support for women’s rights, despite calls by some conservative U.S. lawmakers for Washington to veto her candidacy due to her support for abortion.
Grossi told his hearing before representatives of U.N. member states and civil society on Tuesday that U.N. reform was going in the right direction, but was just a start.
An unwritten rule is that a secretary-general never comes from among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – to avoid over-concentration of power, though their backing is crucial in a lengthy and arcane selection process.
(Reporting by David Brunnstrom in Washington and Olivia Le Poidevin in Geneva; Editing by Don Durfee and Nia Williams)
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