The choice of the next UN secretary-general will determine who succeeds Antonio Guterres, and could give the organisation its first woman leader in more than 80 years.
The selection process began because Guterres is finishing his second five-year term this year. The UN Security Council is holding informal straw polls among its 15 members to find a successor.
Rebeca Grynspan, the 70-year-old former Vice President of Costa Rica and economist who leads the UN Trade and Development agency, strengthened her position in a closed-door ballot in New York on Friday. She received 11 votes in favour and 4 against, her best result in seven such ballots conducted in recent months.
The result did not disclose how France, Britain, the US, Russia and China voted individually.
Grynspan had narrowly led in five of six earlier polls, although Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett of Guyana took first place in one ballot in August. Rodrigues-Birkett, a 53-year-old UN ambassador and former foreign minister, finished third on Friday with eight votes in favour.
Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, the 65-year-old director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, came second with nine ‘encourage’ votes. Friday was the first poll since Lana Nusseibeh, a United Arab Emirates diplomat and former UN ambassador, entered the race.
Nusseibeh came fourth with seven votes in favour, six against and two marked ‘no opinion’. “I am a candidate for the post of secretary-general because I believe the time has come to act with greater urgency,” she said.
Grynspan is Jewish and the daughter of Holocaust survivors who fled Poland to escape Nazi persecution and settled in Costa Rica after the Second World War. She has close family in Israel. She told Reuters that the UN had become too risk-averse, and that its next leader must be prepared to bear the cost of diplomatic failure and try again.
Her lead does not settle the contest. No candidate won the backing of all five permanent Council members.
To make a formal recommendation, the Council will need to give a candidate at least nine positive votes and no ‘discourage’ votes from any of its five permanent members. The General Assembly appoints the next secretary-general after receiving that recommendation.
Mike Waltz, the US ambassador to the United Nations, said the Council needed to select ‘the best candidate’ and called for substantial reform within the organisation. Asked whether Washington could support one of the seven candidates or was awaiting further entrants, he replied: ‘We'll see’.
Friday’s result nevertheless puts Grynspan further ahead in a process that can take repeated rounds. When Guterres was selected in October 2016, the Council required six straw polls to reach agreement.
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