News Digest

Sun setting on Ki-moon and the world’s toughest job interview begins

Imagine, if you can, the world’s most terrifying job interview. Now make it worse. Worse still. Now you’re approaching something close to the interviewing process for the eight unlucky candidates vying to be the new United Nations Secretary General. Over the next three days, each of them is to spend two hours being grilled by representatives from the UN’s 193 member states, most of whom have competing and sometimes even opposing priorities. Oh yes, and it’s going to be broadcast live across the world.

Finally, some transparency in a process that has been shrouded in secrecy for 70 years.

Ben Donaldson from United Nations Association UK

The candidates have also had to submit a ‘Vision Statement’ to their interviewers ahead of time, just so there’s plenty of ammunition to clobber them with. As if that wasn’t hard enough, there will also be some wildcard questions submitted via video by ordinary people who aren’t connected to the UN. The candidates are from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the Republic of Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Bulgaria, the Republic of Moldova and Portugal, but the current favourite is former prime minister of New Zealand Helen Clark. Previously the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - America, UK, France, Russia and China - have anointed a candidate and presented them to the rest of the UN as a done deal.