UNITED NATIONS, Sept 24, CMC – Guyana Thursday made an impassioned plea to the global community to support its candidate Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett for the position as the next Secretary General of the United Nations amid international media reports that the United States may veto her selection.
The final selection process to replace the incumbent Antonio Guterres, whose second term concludes on December 31, 2026, is expected to take place by October.
President Irfaan Ali, addressing the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) said the United Nations needs its next Secretary General to work with all member states to restore confidence in the organisation, mobilise its energies, and turn the language of multilateralism from aspiration into action
“The reform of the United Nations, the restoration of trust, and the need to manage transformation is, therefore, inseparable from the question of leadership. And the choice of its next Secretary General will be, in no small measure, a choice about the kind of United Nations we wish to leave to the generations that follow.
“It is in this spirit that Guyana has put forward the candidature of Her Excellency Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett for the office of Secretary General of the United Nations,” Ali told the UNGA.
The New York Times has reported that Washington is opposed to the candidacy of Guyana’s Ambassador to the United Nations over her stance on the situation in Gaza, describing it as a genocide.
In a comprehensive report on the race for the next United Nations Secretary General, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration was also against the nomination of former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet over her positions on abortion. She dropped out of the race last week.
But Preaident Ali said that his country’s nominee had served her country, represented the developing world, and worked within the multilateral system with a deep understanding of both its promise and its imperfections.
“We believe that her experience, her convictions, her record of service speak directly to the leadership this moment demands. Her candidature, therefore, requires special significance amid the profound challenges confronting the United Nations and its national order.
“We need leadership capable of restoring trust without compromising principles, of listening without surrendering conviction, of building bridges across the widening chasms between North and South, between large states and small, between the developed and developing world.
“We need a Secretary General who will defend the Charter not only when it is politically convenient but precisely when its principles are under pressure,” Ali said, noting that on a personal note, the Guyanese diplomat comes from every experience.
He said her very upbringing crossed every struggle and that every aspect of her accomplishment defined and broke barriers.
“An Indigenous woman coming from a small Indigenous village, defying the odds, the odds against Indigenous persons, the odds against women, the odds against poverty, defining every challenge and rising to the top amidst those challenges.
“Her character is built on struggle, sacrifice, commitment. Her accomplishments are crafted in her humanity. This is an individual of extreme qualities, not because she is a Guyanese, not because she comes from Guyana, but because I know personally, and many of you know this too, the permanent representatives sitting here in New York.
“You know her character. You know her integrity. You know her will. You know her commitment. You know her love for humanity. You know her love for this world and I know that this world will be a better place with Carolyn Rodrigues as the Secretary General of the United Nations”
Ali said in “the humblest of ways” he is calling on the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, including the United States “and every member here to look beyond the small country that nominated her.
“Look beyond the small country that nominated her,” he said, adding that the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) grouping “as a body has endorsed her.
“Let us rise to the challenge of giving this Indigenous woman the chance of helping us craft together the United Nations we want to see succeed,” Ali said, adding that the responsibility for recommending the next Secretary General rests in the first instance with the Security Council.
“And we therefore respectfully place before its members the candidature of Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, endorsed by the Caribbean Community, we invite all to consider her candidacy, on its merits, and to judge whether her vision, experience, expertise, and record can help restore confidence in the United Nations at this critical moment.”
If she is elected, Rodriques-Birkett would become the first Caribbean and indeed the first woman to lead the global organization and in the UN Security Council’s informal secret straw polls, she has maintained a leading position among the declared candidates.
In the third straw poll held earlier this month, she received eight “encourage” votes, six “discourage” votes, and one “no opinion” vote.
CMC/pr/ir/2026