Why Uganda's Otunnu is the man need to revive the UN

Olara Otunnu of Uganda worked as Kofi  Annan’s UN Under Secretary-General. [Courtesy

Given my United Nations past and my writings on the ongoing, 35-year-old conflict in Somalia, the Somali taxi driver taking me to a train station in London last week was keen to give me his opinion on the election underway for the next United Nations Secretary-General.

‘It is an irrelevant race,” he said. “There is no room for diplomacy in our world any more. The big powers have shown they will readily use war against weaker nations to achieve what they want. No Secretary General can change that.”

He was absolutely right about the nature of our world and the unprecedented marginalization of the United Nations in averting war and promoting peace, the goal for which was created in a prescient US-led effort with the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom after the vast global destruction of  the Second World War. But the fear that the United Nations could become even more marginalized is a real one.

For many decades, UN diplomacy was the driving force in resolving major crises through intense negotiations or interventions by the United Nations Security Council.  Even after US President Ronald Reagan’s constant condemnation of the UN and his crippling reductions of political and financial support to the Organization in the 1980s, the US engaged intensely with the Security Council to try to win its support for its wars in Iraq (1991 and 2003), Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, the former Yugoslavia including Kosovo, among others.

The US did launch the war against Iraq in 2003 without Security Council approval, rendering that war illegal. In my view, UN approval was unjustified for most of the other wars - but the approvals rendered them lawful under international law.

But after decades of its centrality in the multiple struggles for peace, development and human rights, the Organization has been unable to prevent being definitively cast aside as the global conflict-prevention body, with Secretary General Guterres, at the end of his 10 tough years, failing, admittedly against very heavy odds. to find even a modicum of the wedge needed keep the UN relevant at this most dangerous period in recent history.

So in the horrendous wars now underway in Ukraine, Gaza (despite the fiction of a cease fire) and Iran (in 2025 and 2026), negotiations involving the UN were not given even a thought by US presidents Joe Biden and Donald Trump.  Indeed a unilateral Trump original, the Board of Peace, has won growing support among US allies, so it is easy to believe that the UN  might become even less relevant in the search for a less violent global landscape.

But this does not have to be the case. Having worked at the United Nations under four Secretaries-General, and serving in a very senior position under Kofi Annan, I can assert with confidence that a savvy, innovative strategist with hands-on involvement in conflict resolution and enjoying a global standing could again win back support for the United Nations  - because the UN offers unique capacities for building a more stable world, which would protect the interests of the most powerful states as well.

We need the strongest possible advocate for that position to lead the UN and make that case in a compelling manner.   

Luckily we have at least one candidate who is fully capable rectifying the UN’s current isolation: Ambassador Olara Otunnu of Uganda, who almost became Secretary General in 1997, losing to Kofi Annan.  Of those running for this top post now, he is the only one who has spent his entire life deeply immersed in conflict resolution and who has repeatedly found ways to create consensus among strongly entrenched opposing interests. 

He was stymied in 197 by the Clinton Administration which wanted, despite strong opposition from the other 14 member states, to not only oust Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali after one term but install Mr Annan as his replacement. Luckily for the world, the relatively unknown Annan had what it took to make the UN a much more relevant diplomatic force.

My conviction that Otunnu is the ideal candidate does not in any way mean that there are no other highly qualified and distinguished candidates, in particular the two women comfortably leading in the straw polls, Rebecca Grynspan and Carolyn Rodrigues Birkett. I strongly the women candidates should be given the fullest attention as it is past time for the world to celebrate our first woman Secretary General.

If Council member states end up feeling that one of the men is the most qualified but a woman is almost as well qualified, then that woman should be elected, in my view.

It would, however, be improper if the Council decided that a woman must be appointed, since applications were invited from both men and women.

Mr Otunnu was set back by the loss of three supporters in the new straw poll this week. A last-minute entrant to the race, he had quickly shot up from last place to the leading man in the race, behind leaders Grynspan and Birkett and passing  Mr Rafael Grossi, another of the strong candidates. Now Mr Grossi has received more “encourage” votes than Mr. Otunnu.

But as long as there is no consensus on who should be the next secretary general, the race is wide open and in the inevitable horse trading that ensues outside of a consensus, anything can happen. Indeed there is speculation that the lack of a clear winner thus far might mean that a current senior officer might be appointed interim secretary general, which has never happened before.

To complicate it even more, in the end the five permanent members who play the decisive role in the election look beyond qualifications to identify who will best promote their interest.

But these Security Council straw polls and other measures have introduced some badly needed transparency in what used to be a highly opaque and secretive process for one of the world’s most important election. This behooves all of us commentators to make our cases about who we favour and why.

So coming back to my view about Mr Otunnu’s substantial strengths: when Mr Kofi Annan was elected Secretary General in 1997, he appointed Mr Otunnu as first UN Under-Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.

It is instructive to look at how Mr Otunnu radically transformed how this issue was perceived, lifting what was considered a humanitarian issue into one which directly affected international peace and security. On that basis, he won support from the Security Council to name and hold accountable not just insurgents but governments. Child Protection Advisers were introduced in peacekeeping missions, and child-specific war crimes were incorporated into the Rome Statute framework for the International Criminal Court.

Sixteen years earlier, as president in December 1981 of the UN Security Council, aged only 31, Mr Otunnu had astonishingly managed to break through a prolonged and bitter impasse in the election of a new Secretary-General that was threatening to paralyze the entire Organization.

In the process, he also introduced an innovative procedure including straw votes to help the Security Council gauge the level of support for the various candidates  running for Secretary‑General. This was a transformational innovation and immediately adopted for all future elections and named The Otunnu Formula – under which Mr Otunnu is now competing!  Few international public servants can point to two institutional innovations, separated by more than two decades.  

In my view, the candidate most qualified among the many electable candidates is Uganda’s Olara Otunnu, who has spent his entire life dealing with in international conflict resolution and found ways to create consensus among entrenched opposing interests: Olara Otunnu of Uganda.

He has also enjoyed a global standing spanning decades, as evidenced by the fact that during this campaign, he is the only candidate who met the heads of three Permanent, veto- wielding members of the Security Council, according to Pass Blue, a very credible, UN-focused publication: Andrew Burnham and Emmanul Macron, as well as President Vladmir Putin when Mr Otunnu held discussions in Moscow with Foreign Secretary Lavrov. I should immediately add that such meetings do not imply that these leaders will be backing Mr Otunnu in this election.