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As the United Nations approaches its seventy-fifth anniversary, all eyes are on António Guterres, the organization's ninth secretary-general (UNSG), who took office in January 2017 following an unusually transparent and inclusive election process. The interest and engagement generated by the 2016 election process revealed the continuing importance and centrality of the office today. Although the UN Charter describes the UNSG primarily as the UN's “chief administrative officer,” over time this position has come to involve being the UN's chief diplomatic and political representative. The 1 for 7 billion campaign in 2016 described the office as one that “can save lives” and whose decisions affect all the world's seven billion people. The campaign therefore argued, “We need the best possible person for the job.”1 Different claims to representation—for member states or regions, for the world's peoples, and for women—influenced the public discourse surrounding the 2016 election process for the secretary-general.2 Claims that the secretary-general should represent a broader constituency are not new. Indeed, the UN itself describes the UNSG as “a symbol of United Nations ideals and a spokesman for the interests of the world's peoples, in particular the poor and vulnerable among them.”3
This essay argues that an important reason the office has expanded its mandate and generates such interest today is that the secretary-general occupies a special symbolic position as a “guardian” of the UN Charter. This authority has enabled the office to expand its political and diplomatic activities. Such a role also brings heavy responsibilities and challenges for the secretary-general. Because the UNSG, more than anyone else within the UN system, represents the UN overall, the office is often called upon to act when other UN organs are unable or unwilling. And when things go wrong, the UNSG takes the blame. Furthermore, there is an inherent tension in the concept of a guardian of the Charter. Who or what is the secretary-general supposed to be “guarding”—the member states or the peoples of the world? Successive secretaries-general have each struggled to balance the interests of member states with the interests of the peoples of these states.
Foundations for the UNSG's Role as a Guardian of the UN Charter
What does it mean to say that the UNSG is a “guardian” of...