The Secretary-General’s chair: seven votes without an answer

The chair of the UN Secretary-General falls vacant on 31 December, and it still has no heir. The Security Council is trying the candidates on for the seventh time, and once again none of them has managed to prove that none of the five permanent members will oppose him or her. Kazakhstan, meanwhile, has already made its choice: on 22 October the Foreign Ministry backed the nomination of Lana Nusseibeh of the UAE, and in the first vote in which she took part she came fourth.

What a straw is

The UN Charter puts it briefly: the Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly on the recommendation of the Security Council, that is Article 97. To produce a recommendation, the Council first tries candidates in informal votes called straw polls. The phrase is older than the procedure. The Etymonline dictionary dates “straw vote” to 1866 and “straw poll” to 1932, but the image is far older: a straw is tossed into the air to see which way the wind blows. O. Henry added in 1907 that a straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.

The ballot gives three answers: “encourage”, “discourage” and “no opinion”. The results are not published officially, but they reach the internet within minutes of the closed meeting. At the sixth vote coloured ballots were introduced to distinguish the votes of the five permanent members, each of which holds a veto, from those of the ten elected members. At the seventh the Council went back to undifferentiated ones.

Seven votes

The first took place on 30 July, followed by votes on 21 August, 18 and 29 September, and 7, 16 and 30 October, Security Council Report says. For comparison, in 2016 the Council needed six. In the seventh vote on 30 October Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica received 11 “encourage” and 4 “discourage” votes, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi got 9 “encourage”, 4 “discourage” and 2 “no opinion”, Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana got 8, 6 and 1, and Lana Nusseibeh of the UAE got 7, 6 and 2.

Seven candidates take part in the votes: Ivonne A-Baki and María Fernanda Espinosa Garcés (both of Ecuador), Rafael Grossi (Argentina), Rebeca Grynspan (Costa Rica), Lana Nusseibeh (UAE), Olara Otunnu (Uganda) and Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett (Guyana). Argentina nominated Grossi as early as 26 November 2025, Costa Rica nominated Grynspan on 3 March, and the UAE nominated Nusseibeh only on 21 October. The figures look confident, but they do not remove the veto. In the sixth, coloured, vote every candidate received “discourage” votes from permanent members: Grynspan, Rodrigues-Birkett and Grossi two each. “Encourage” votes from permanent members came from three of the five for Grynspan and Rodrigues-Birkett and from two for Grossi. After that vote, in which ten Council members, including three permanent ones, voted against him, Senegal’s Macky Sall withdrew from the race: he wrote that he wanted to help a compromise candidate emerge, Security Council Report says. To pass, a candidate needs at least nine votes out of fifteen and no veto.

The dispute is not only about people. The countries of Latin America and the Caribbean insist that by regional rotation the post should go to one of their own, and confirmed this with a joint statement before Nusseibeh’s dialogue in the General Assembly. The permanent members, by contrast, are hurrying the Council and proposing coloured ballots, which, in Security Council Report’s reckoning, may push candidates with low scores out of the race. A majority decided to go back to undifferentiated ballots at the seventh vote, arguing that the new candidate could not be put straight onto the stage with coloured ballots.

Orbán without a nominator

In the shadow of this procedure lives another version of the race. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial of 25 October reported that the Trump administration had proposed that former Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán run for Secretary-General as a candidate of the United States, Russia and China, and that Russia and China, according to the paper’s interlocutors, support the idea. A State Department official, according to the paper, estimated that Orbán would get eight votes in the Council without difficulty, with ten within reach. Trump and Vice President Vance, by the same account, would back him, but the announcement is postponed until the US midterm elections. Orbán himself is interested but not ready to run unless he is sure of winning.

There are many buts around this report. Russia’s deputy foreign minister Alexander Alimov told Interfax that neither Russia, nor the United States, nor China will nominate Orbán, because the permanent members of the Security Council nominate nobody, and those behind the idea will have to find a nominating country. No country has publicly proposed Orbán, Brussels Signal notes, and Moscow and Beijing have not confirmed. Orbán lost Hungary’s April election. He is not on the list of candidates taking part in the Council’s votes.

Kazakhstan and fourth place

Kazakhstan’s position is set out in the Foreign Ministry’s statement of 22 October. The ministry welcomed Nusseibeh’s nomination and expressed support for the initiative, and called the widening of the circle of contenders “an additional opportunity” for dialogue and the search for an acceptable solution, Tengrinews reports. In the statement the ministry recalled the words of Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi at the General Assembly session: the election of the new Secretary-General will be one of the defining events of the session. The UAE foreign minister, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, later thanked Tleuberdi for this support by telephone.

Support for a nomination is not a vote, however. Fifteen Council members take part in the votes, and Nusseibeh, according to Security Council Report, had to answer questions about independence. Some Council members, judging by the same report, are not ready to back a candidate who is not from Latin America. Others have questions about her independence in connection with the UAE’s support for Somaliland and a statement that Nusseibeh made as a UAE official denying the country’s role in supporting the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. These questions were put to her by representatives of Sudan and of civil society at the dialogue in the General Assembly, and she answered by citing Article 100 of the Charter on the independence of the Secretary-General. In Kazakhstan, judging by the Foreign Ministry’s statement, they stress something else: a transparent and inclusive selection based on candidates’ professional merit.

The name of Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has also been heard in this race. The Guardian, as retold by UNN, named him in September together with Orbán among possible late entrants. Tokayev is not on the list of candidates taking part in the Council’s votes.

What next

Guterres’s term expires on 31 December, two months from now. The new Secretary-General is appointed by the General Assembly, and only on the Council’s recommendation. The next vote, the Stimson think tank warns, may take place only in early December: rumour has it that Russia will not allow one in November, when Latvia chairs the Council. Before then the list of candidates may change: new contenders, as noted, can enter the race at any moment.

What remains unknown

It is unknown whether a country will be found willing to nominate Orbán, and whether London and Paris, which also hold vetoes, will agree not to stand in his way. It is not reported when the eighth vote will take place and whether coloured ballots will return for it. It is unclear whether Nusseibeh will manage to improve her result at the expense of countries outside Latin America. Questions remain for Kazakhstan’s Foreign Ministry: what steps Astana will take to support the UAE’s candidate and how it will respond to a Council recommendation if it goes to a candidate from another region.

Three signals will show which way the race is leaning. First: will a vote be held before the end of November. Second: will the number of “discourage” votes fall for Grynspan, Grossi and Rodrigues-Birkett, especially among permanent members. Third: will a nominator appear for Orbán. If by mid-December these questions remain open, the Council will have about two weeks left before the end of Guterres’s term.