The next secretary-general of the United Nations will be the Portuguese António Guterres. The official designation came during the General Assembly session on Thursday 13 October: the mandate of the successor to South Korean Ban Ki-moon will begin on 1 January.

António Guterres, a socialist, served as prime minister of Portugal

The confirmation of Guterres's name was considered a formality in practice, following the unanimous support received by the candidate at the beginning of October from the Security Council. In a speech delivered immediately after the acclamation, the incoming secretary-general stated that he wished to fight "populists and terrorists", as well as to "serve the most vulnerable", and "the victims of all conflicts: it is time to fight for peace".

Born in Lisbon on 30 April 1949, Guterres is an engineer. He began his political career within Catholic movements, before joining the Portuguese Socialist Party, in which he became active in the wake of the 1974 revolution. Elected as a member of parliament in the first elections of 1976, in 1992 he became secretary-general of the Socialists, whom he led — three years later — to victory in the elections. That success earned him the post of prime minister.

Criticism over his anti-abortion stance

During Guterres's government Portugal experienced a period of strong economic expansion, which made it possible to introduce significant changes in the country, such as the creation of a guaranteed minimum income — a measure strongly championed by the prime minister, who also placed great emphasis on the country's entry into the euro. His detractors, however, reproached him for having contributed — as a devout Catholic — to the victory of the "no" vote in the 1998 referendum on the decriminalisation of abortion.
When East Timor, a former Portuguese colony, was struck by massacres carried out by pro-Indonesian militias in 1999, Guterres demonstrated considerable diplomatic skill, convincing the international community to launch a United Nations intervention. From 2005 to 2015 he then headed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), fighting for the rights of the millions of migrants and asylum seekers who were the result in particular of the war in Syria.

Russia called for a candidate from Eastern Europe

His election to lead the Glass Palace was not in reality straightforward. Initially, Guterres had received twelve votes in favour, two against and one abstention. The Portuguese candidate entered the race with two handicaps: he is not a woman (many would have preferred to avoid yet another man in the role), but above all he does not come from Eastern Europe — a region that, on the basis of an unwritten rule, believed it might be able to put forward the next secretary-general. Hence Russia's strong reluctance: after the African Kofi Annan and the Asian Ban Ki-moon, Moscow had anticipated the selection of a candidate from the former Soviet bloc.

Russia would indeed have been more favourably disposed towards the names of Irina Bokova, director-general of Unesco, who was however rejected by the United States owing to the agency's historic decision to officially recognise Palestine. Or alternatively the Slovak foreign minister, Miroslav Lajčák, or his Serbian counterpart Vuk Jeremić.